


The alterity of morning

by imaginationandheartbreak (alexgrey)



Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: Angst, BDSM, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Light BDSM, Mattex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Smut, Spanking, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-03
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 11:33:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/952586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexgrey/pseuds/imaginationandheartbreak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who is Matt this morning, after that? He remembers Alex spread naked across his knee, spilling gorgeous, begging, needful confessions and his hand coming down across her ass again and again and how he had felt a bit lost.  And …  he had loved it: how she had felt underneath him and around him and how, together, they had been so tearful and electric.  The best night of his life. And a bit scary, if he was being truthful.  Alex Kingston had amazed him and scared him.  And changed him?  And who was she, this morning?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a follow-up to 'Learning to come to his voice' (my first fic - thanks for everyone who posted such nice comments - you made me brave enough to write this one). It probably makes most sense to read that other piece first. I guess this can also stand alone - maybe - but parts of it might not make sense... so long as you know it's the morning after something you missed. I hope you like it. I think I'll try at least one more scene with these two as a follow-up (and will get them out of that flat!), maybe trying to use my unused mattex kinkathon prompt ' bondage.' Let me know if you'd read that.

Matt wakes up, one arm curled around a spooning Alex the other reaching down between their bodies, his hand sleepily cupping at her ass. He feels her shift and now she is turning in his arms to face him, smiling up at him, now kissing him and it feels possessive and testing, Alex silently forming the question along her tongue: _still mine, Matt?_ And, oh, he is definitely hers, utterly hers, his tongue answers back, his hips shifting determinedly to anchor himself against her, even his heart pressing against her heart now, his hand securing the small of her back, fingers fanning: oh, glorious morning.

He smiles a bit crazily into this kiss because everything about this feels like a first time, not just new as in last-night-new but just, well, like absolutely the first time – like he’s never woken up with a woman in his arms before, like he doesn’t know how, exactly, to say good morning, whether they’ll share breakfast, like he has no idea what he’s supposed to say about what they’d done, really.  New.  And who is he this morning, after _that_? He can’t help but deepen the kiss a bit as he remembers Alex spread naked across his knee, spilling gorgeous, begging, needful confessions and his hand coming down across her ass again and again and how he had felt a bit lost.  And …  he had loved it: how she had felt underneath him and around him and how, together, they had been so tearful and electric.   _The best night of my life_. And a bit scary, if he was being truthful.  Alex Kingston had amazed him and scared him.  And changed him?  And who was _she_ , this morning?

“Hello,” Alex says, then, in a perfect River voice, that same gentle, nudging hello from ‘A Good Man Goes to War’ that marks the moment where the Doctor finally understands who River is, and who she is to him and the implications churn and then explode in the Doctor’s suddenly hopeful, grateful eyes.  He’d loved that exchange.

His heart smiles.  He’s pretty sure, anyway, that he gets what she’s doing.  She’s just brilliant with those eyes… and he’s watched and re-watched her, and has an embarrassingly encyclopedic knowledge of her repertoire. Familiar territory to start, then, at least.  In the episode he’d said hello first, but he was beyond grateful Alex had been the one to start speaking.  He’ll play:  

“Hello.”  

Matt uses the same amazed, vulnerable, hopeful voice he’d used for the Doctor, but draws the line at the giggling.  And locks eyes with Alex as if they’re still on that set, not looking at her like he’s trying to top her now – just looking to see what page they’re on. And if his gaze is also grateful and full of future and says YES so much the better, Matt thinks.

The exchange is ironic, protective, coded and he’s glad for it.  It’s a bit weird having Moff’s intertext directing a conversation he’s having _in bed_ but, well, comforting, too.  The rest of that page of script goes unspoken, but he thinks he can feel Alex thinking the final lines in duet with him –

_how do I look?_   
_Amazing._   
_I’d better be._   
_You’d better be.—_

and he lets out a soft laugh, sits up, pulls her to an embrace and presses a quick kiss to Alex’s forehead.  “I’d better be” he says in a laughing voice. “And I AM,” he follows, a beat later… the words turning just a bit slowly in his mouth and he grabs Alex’s small, strong, right wrist and, bringing her hand to his lips, touches a soft and burning kiss to her palm.

“Oh, shut up,” Alex replies, swatting him on the arm with her free hand, fondly, smiling.   _Bloody mindreader_ , she thinks to herself, just a bit incredulous. _happy_. Matt’s still holding her other wrist, gently, firmly, his long fingers now circling it easily like a cuff, overlapping at her pulse point where she knows the telltale signs of her heart are beating into his thumb and - _damn him they have to get going to work -_ speeding up …  She yawns and stretches her free arm and arches her back, feels herself sore and stirring but is so so careful not to pull against his hold. Indeed, she relaxes her right arm even more completely – _do you_ _understand?_

Matt tightens his hold on her wrist, then, giving it a lingering, too tight squeeze so they are both forced to feel her pulse begin a thudding race before releasing it.  
Oh yes, Matt Smith can read minds. Hers anyway.  _Oh, God, Matt,_ she wants to say, _Take everything_.

The way Alex looks at him makes him almost giddy. This is happening.  Alex Kingston, naked and gorgeous beside him, just sitting in bed, looking at him the way he feels about her.  She’s so lovely, even – maybe especially -  on waking. It could easily be his new favourite thing:  curls tangled, eyes sleepy, breasts full, looking pretty fantastically shagged.  Yes, favourite.  He brings his hands to those breasts now, covering them -   _even my hands are different_   - and Alex’s breath catches and her nipples harden into his fingers.  She’s not 20 anymore and he likes that, too – he would be lying if he didn’t admit he had a kink for her age.  _starstruck._  She’s slightly softer, he supposes, fuller in a way he finds delicious; small scrunchy laugh lines by her eyes that he can see when she’s not wearing makeup. They’re brilliant he decides – all that laughing, yeah? An actor’s life, but also so _Alex_ ... thousands more days of ringing laughs and wrenching tears, arched eyebrows and pleasured screams, embarrassed giggles and empathy and knowing smiles.  When it came to experiencing life, Alex was all in.  It made him so hungry for her; was even hotter than his hands now travelling the length of her waist to her hips and back to her breasts.

“And _you_ , Ms. Kingston…are also _completely._ bloody. amazing.”  His throat is dry. God, he realizes they’ve really hardly _spoken_ yet this morning, in spite of the lengthy script unfolding in his head.  He can’t put what he’s feeling into words so he tries to put what he’s feeling into his hands, stilled now at her ribs, willing his warmth to melt that cage of bone around her heart.

Morning at the Kingston flat, he decides, promotes some bloody tantric wake-up ritual.  Like hypnosis.   _Let’s stay here forever, Alex._

She trusts his hands. _And, God, he is so beautiful,_ Alex thinks _._ Strange beautiful, surprising beautiful, handsome over time.  Coltish and physical and expressive; a million faces.  She wants to see them all. _To show herself to them._ And, oh, she’d forgotten how much she loves to fuck _talent_.  Oh, Matt. _Her heart._

_Get a grip, Alex.  He could be in over his head. You could be_.  It might have been a one night thing.  Maybe it should be. She knew enough about men and mornings to know that she was hardly getting the brush-off or anything… quite the opposite: his fingers on her like she’s braille.  But they were going to need to _talk_ about all this, she supposed – was she embarrassed? That depended entirely on Matt, she realized.  And she selfishly wished for more of this delicious morning semi-silence and long trustful pauses and touching. Before anything could be ruined.  She was in love with this temporary world, this heady space outside of misunderstandings or disappointment. With this. _Him._

Alex turns to straddle him, pressing her cunt against the base of his erection – _oh, lovely youth_ \- and a kiss to his temple.  Gently rising and falling, brushing herself along his length, pressing last night’s bruises into his thighs, a soundless thank you and a question. She doesn’t want to look at him, just _be_ with him.  And he doesn’t say anything – _mindreader_ – just tightens his grip around her waist, lifting her. Matt positions himself at her entrance and nudges her down, slowly, firmly. She gasps as she sinks onto him, their pelvic bones almost meeting, presses her face tight to his neck and begins a slow, steady rise and fall. 

_Yes, tantric_ , Matt thinks, drinking in Alex, and silence and bliss and sex slower than he can stand.  His hands move to her ass, tracing gently along her bruises and Alex at last begins to grind with urgency and Matt’s hands are now – _he is perfect_ \- exactly where she needs them, one thumb pulling up on her vulva, the other circling just above her clit and the room fills with low moans.  Finally, Alex needs to talk:

“Matt?”

“Yes,” he whispers.  And she comes.

 

*

She glances at the clock, groaning: “Sorry, darling, we need to be on set in an hour.”   _Let’s not go._   Matt’s hands weave through her hair, holding on like he’s grasping a bridle. Oh, those talented hands. And _Oh, bloody hell, I’ll need to wash my hair._

“You shower, I’ll make tea,” Alex says, willing herself up before she roots to this spot forever, sending out too-obvious tendrils of desire and hope, planting a soft kiss to Matt’s mouth, flicking her tongue against his upper lip because it is now irresistible she tells herself but also:   _he likes you flirty, Alex._ He likes all of you.   _He can’t._

The morning needs to start; they’ll be late.  She needs to get UP. And make tea. But she wants to kiss him again, needs to kiss him again, so does. This kiss is startling in its intensity as Alex dances a silent, unintelligible ‘I love you’ into his mouth, actually breathing the words into him.  Matt matches her with an unquestioning tongue. Oh, this morning will end, all of this will, Alex knows, already hearing the clock striking midnight, and her groan into Matt’s mouth masks a heavy loss-lamenting sigh. _But it doesn’t have to end now, does it?_

Alex breaks the kiss first, and pulls her curls from his hands, granting Matt a slightly haunted smile, and, turning, apparently unselfconscious of the way last night had marked her – _god, is that his handprint?_ \- gets out of bed and walks across the soft blue, oh-so-Alex carpet to grab her robe from the back of the bedroom door to disappear in the direction of the kitchen.   Alex in her robe is floral, all oranges and pinks, the colours a bit alarming and jarring ( _and perfect_ , Matt thinks) against her hair.  His Alex.

Matt considers asking – insisting? – that she join him in the shower … he feels all of a sudden desperate to keep her from dressing, desperate to taste her, to take her slowly against the bathroom tiles, skin soapy and slick.  To look at her in the morning light and press kisses to all the soft bruises and whisper thank-yous and I’m sorrys and is-this-really-oks and oh-Alex-I-love-yous across her flesh.  Instead he turns on the shower and fights back an unmoored feeling, a fear that he might never see her naked again if they dress.  Oh, he knows last night had been fantastic, and this perfect, silent morning, too – _fuck, being here is everything he has Ever. Wanted._ – but maybe Alex Kingston just made fantastic, life-changing sex happen routinely.  She hadn’t promised, had she? 

“Towels are in the cupboard,” Alex yells from the kitchen loud enough for him to hear over the beating water. That _voice_. Her voice makes him ache, and ache even for more mundane details of her life – where to find her umbrella, the paracetamol, flower vases, the kettle:  anything Alex.  _Alex Kingston just directing him to her linen closet is, well, sexy._

Fuck. What is this? Who should he be? Acting always gives him a rush and this is no different. Except it is. He turns his face to the spray, working to still his worries.  Replays and remembers: Alex beautiful and begging and unguarded. And, finally, in his arms.  happy. Oh, she _had_ promised. He knows she had.  He just needs to acknowledge it.  Simple.  He knows.

Matt turns off the water, grabs a towel, wraps it around his waist and opens the door to be greeted by Alex, offering him tea. “Thanks,” he says, voice level, sweet, the way he might even have said thanks to her yesterday, taking a sip and placing the cup carefully on the hall sidetable. He didn’t want to start the day spilling it. _Action, Matt._ He runs his hand through dripping hair.

He’s _processing_ , Alex thinks, noting the nervous gesture. _So that’s it, then_. Ok, right. “Oh, you are very welcome,” Alex replies, the slight disappointment in her smile almost impossible to catch, turning her body just a bit sideways to move past him in the doorway for her own shower, feeling a sideways shift in herself, too: they will soon leave for separate cars and work and Matt will be thankful and happy but over it and she will be utterly professional and this will disappear. It’s for the best.  She blinks hard, happy to have had this intimate chance: Matt with wet hair, drinking her tea. 

“Alex,” Matt ventures slowly, just then, in a low register, stretching his arm out to block the doorway and stop her movement:

“don’t forget…”  
\- _make her look at you, Matt –_ he reaches through her robe and brings his hand slowly between her legs to cup her cunt, never letting her eyes leave his; watches her bottom jaw move almost imperceptibly back and forth –

 “… mine to fuck.”

 Alex’s heart drops through her cunt.

 Only now can she let herself feel how much she does not want this to be over.  

 “I know.”  Alex’s voice is low and quiet. _Thank God._

 “Good.”

 A full five seconds pass, Matt’s hand unmoving; possessive. It feels like forever.

He slides two fingers into her and she stays perfectly still. “And I will fuck you every day, however I like.” He pumps his fingers in and out to the beat of the words and she fights her hips’ rise to meet him.

Alex draws in a sharp breath and Matt inserts a third finger, tenting his hand, eliciting a jagged moan.

“And every night.”

_Oh, YES._ _Yesssss_. 

 But not right now! A tiny reality switch goes on in Alex’s head and she gently pulls at Matt’s wrist and twists away from his fingers.  “Matt,” she laughs, throatily, swatting him. “I expect you to make good on that promise. But the shower calls.  We work - remember?”  _She’s his though_. Alex smiles. Needs him. Damn him, though, she also needs to _come_ now.  She looks forward to the evening.  And her cunt throbs just even thinking about the possibility of _every_ evening and needing to be always ready for him and the way he _said_ that.  So, so bloody long.  And not ever quite this before.

If only life was like the movies.  It’s very hot to imagine, but the rational part of her knows they’ll be lucky to manage monthly sex – she’ll take what she can get, though. _She does not want this to be over._   She has a life, a pretty brutal schedule and she knows he does, too.  She’s leaving for LA in a week.  And if she doesn’t shower right now she will be late. For work. Reality.

She takes a step toward the shower – again – but with a much lighter heart and can hardly register the force with which Matt has suddenly turned her and pushed her to the wall, her face pressed sideways, both arms twisted back.  “Matt!” _Not her safeword._   He gathers her small wrists into his left hand and gathers up her robe in the back with his right, pinning the hem under her arms, exposing her. Matt pauses a second to marvel at her ass, criss-crossed in bruises and almost involuntarily brings his right hand down hard, hitting her soundly.   
  
“Do not tempt me to put you over my knee again so soon, Alex.  Just don’t.”

She whimpers. Fuck it.  This is perfect. Four years.  _Entrusted._ Him wanting her _like this_ was the only missing piece.And so, breathlessly: “you might need to, Matt.” _Want you to._

He almost comes right there. _Fuck_.  One more blow, backhand before he drops his towel and pushes the length of his body against her, roughly urging her legs further apart with his knee.  She feels his breath on her neck and his hand pumping his cock.

“Matt…” Pleading.

“Touch yourself.” He drops her hands.

Alex responds immediately, right hand between her legs, rubbing small circles, forehead resting now against the wall.  “Like this?”

Oh, yes, you do not run from me.” Matt growls sternly, then moves in close, his lips to her ear whispering,  drawing out the words, “Oh, our nights, Alex.”  He turns her to face him.  His cock throbs.  He would love to fuck her but wants this more. _Wants it for her._

Matt guides her left hand to her breast and watches her take her nipple between thumb and index finger roughly, pinching impossibly hard. _Noted._ He needs to step back to take her in, but also so it’s even possible to breathe, all oxygen missing too close to her orbit.  Her robe has fallen entirely open now, and he registers golden skin, her curls, the clashing colours of the fabric framing her, her legs spread, the artistry of her hands, the reddening of her nipple, her head now tilting back, those lips.  She’s like a dirty, living Klimt painting. _Oh FUCK._

“Oh, That’s it, Alex.  Show me. But you are not to come. Understood?”

“Yes,” she says quickly, then moans.

“Good girl.” He can only barely manage saying it without his voice hitching.

God she is dirty and perfect and open, Matt thinks. _Vulnerable._ Then:   _I am responsible to you_.  

“ _Fuck_ , Alex ...”    
  
Oh, he will be.  Is.  He doesn’t deserve her to be letting him.  She’s so much more beautiful, more talented, more experienced, more deserving than he is. Nicer. Funnier. Alex Kingston is a masterclass in everything.   _Breathe, Matt._ She is out of your league, but…. you _love_ her.   _She knows it._   His hand is moving fast now up and down his cock, slick with pre-cum, jerking himself off to thoughts of how brilliant she is, that image somehow even more burning than the living, moaning, obedient picture in front of him. And obedient Alex is hot as fuck. She’s watching him. _I’d better be._

Alex slows her pace, just a bit. “No, Alex, keep going. You need to learn to come when I want you to.”  His makes his tone harsh, unyielding.  He is very good at this. _Responsible to you._

“I know.”

Alex saying ‘ I know’ again, her voice utterly shameless and revealing tips him over the edge, his hand pumping hard. _He_ can come.  And does. _Look what you do to me, Alex._

_GOD, Matt._ Alex tries to control her breathing, is trying to hold on and wait _for him_ , her fingers firm and moving on her clit the way he’d wanted, his questions pooling in her cunt, already feeling the muscles deep inside her moving, opening; so utterly turned on, gently humiliated and set on fire.

“Yes, you will.”

Matt takes barely a moment to recover – _Fuck_ \- before he steps back in to kiss her deeply and moves her hand roughly from her breast, grabbing both her nipples in his own hands now, rolling and twisting to the point of pain. _New._ He breaks the kiss to catch her eyes in his.

“Matt?” It’s a high-pitched, desperate, panting question.

“No, not yet,” he says, sinking to the floor between her legs, still reaching for her breasts with outstretched hands, nudging Alex’s hand away from her clit, firmly, gently with his cheek. Her supplicant. He hears Alex’s hands hit the wall either side of her hips, bracing, before her right hand moves to weave fingers into his hair.  

“Leg up.”

Alex immediately brings her left leg to rest over his shoulder. He carefully places a kiss to her clit, then moans and opens his mouth wide open over her cunt, tasting her _– sharp, tart, amazing_ \- breathing warm air before his tongue moves and he twist her nipples hard again, eliciting a small cry.  In response, Matt enters her with his tongue, letting go of her nipples with his fingers, rubbing them soothingly now with the flat of his palm before sliding them back down, that angle almost impossible. She’s waited long enough. His hands anchor her rocking hips and Matt moves his tongue to her clit, circling.  _Come._

“Matt?  Please?” her voice strangled. He can feel her losing control.

He nods his head, not losing contact with her clit and Alex explodes and shudders under his tongue and screams into the morning. Matt stills her hips and keeps his face pressed to her cunt, his tongue licking slowly, drinking her in.  He cannot get enough of Alex Kingston.  

_She looks up and sees stars and her hand finds his hand._


	2. Second Circle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The smut summary: Alex pulls on her restraints and sobs into the mattress. She misses his hand, the feel of his skin. This is what he wants, though, and she can feel her cunt flutter and open: she needs to give it to him simply because he has asked.
> 
> The angst summary: Not a love letter, then. And her safeword? In a NOTE? 
> 
> Global summary: Angst and smut alternate.

The kiss goodbye at Heathrow is deep and sweet and Matt feels Alex shudder under his hands, move to press her body impossible closer to him.  God, he will miss her – almost two weeks. When he pulls back to drink her in her eyes are wet and she’s blinking back tears. The potent combination of her vulnerability alongside her incredible charisma drives him so happily mad. _Alex._

“Shh… love… just have a wonderful time. I’ll miss you. Call me when you land.”

“Oh, I’ll miss you, too, Matt. So much.”  It’s barely a whisper. And Alex grabs her bag from the back.

It isn’t until he’s watched her gorgeous curls disappear into the terminal that he sees the note she’s left on the front seat, his name written across the envelope in a careful hand.  Love letter, then – _great minds thinking alike_ , he smiles remembering his own note already popped in her handbag, a surprise for the flight.  He opens hers:

_  
My dear, dear DEAR Matt,_

_This is a terrible way to say goodbye and please don’t hate me for it.  I couldn’t stand that. But this kind of thing inevitably has to end, somehow.  No one knows that better than me. You are absolutely entitled to feel however you like without worrying about my feelings. That’s one benefit of an older woman, anyway, right?_

_Please know that I do not regret a single second. Not one.  Goodbye._

_Yours,_

_Juliette._   
  


Not a love letter, then.  And her _safeword_?  In a _NOTE?_ Christ, Alex - who uses a safeword outside of the bloody bedroom? ( _Kitchen, foyer, bathroom, hallway, elevator …)_   Weren’t there rules? Shit. What the hell?  _Oh._  Matt stares at the note, unbelieving.

  
He feels the sting of tears behind his eyes.  Oh stupid. _STUPID_.  It wasn’t so much that he begrudged her the sex…  or regretted it…. Fuck.  Mad as he was he would probably still thank her forever.  No, he just felt stupid right now. And a bit used. Ok.  Unfair, he knows, because he’d asked for it – begged her to use him, really, made himself exactly what she needed and who could blame her for going for it?  Actually, he was a bit of an arsehole to change the terms of engagement on her.  They hadn’t agreed this was True Love or anything – he’d only wished that part.  _Felt it._   And TOLD her.  Dear God. Fuck. Oh, Alex. What happened?

   
She was experienced. She’d had many lovers… maybe lots better than he was.  He knew it had been brilliant… well, thought it had been, anyway… _pretty sure_ …. but that didn’t mean that she _felt_ the things he felt _outside the moment_ and that it meant what it meant for him _–_ _but oh,_ _Alex, I KNOW you felt it then: I was holding you when love ricocheted through your body._   Obviously she didn’t need what he needed.  _But I LOVE you_. 

 

Dangerous, Matt.  And as much as there was nothing more he wanted than to hear her scream his name and just _hold_ him the way she did, and let him hold _her_ \- with his hands, with his tongue, with his cock, with his voice, _with his heart_ \- he realized with a deadening thud that it was over. He’d kissed her for the last time and hadn’t even known it was happening.

 

He grabs some paper from the glovebox and wills his hand to the page before he loses his nerve:

 

_Dear Alex, I could never hate you…_ he begins. He squeezes the paper into a ball and pitches it to the floor.  Starts again with a fresh piece:

 

_Dear Alex, It was brilliant. No regrets.  See you around, Dr. Song.  Matt._

 

He kept it light, tried to keep it from being biting, or revealing or even asking ‘what the fuck’? Oh, he wanted to… but she was no longer entitled to see his heart. With any luck she won’t find his pathetic love note.  If she does, this note will cancel it out.

 

All at once he is numb to caring. It’s everything terrible he could imagine about something so gorgeous:  it hadn’t mattered to her. It hadn’t mattered to her the way it mattered to him. He feels almost nothing as he searches his bag for an envelope and a stamp – roulette… if it’s not there maybe he will sleep on it.  Stamp found. _onward, then_ : addresses an envelope to her house in L.A..  Act2, Matt:  wherein you no longer give a shit about Ms. Alex Kingston, the best and most dangerous fuck of your life.

 

He needs sex, company, that doesn’t feel complicated and _too much_.  With that in mind, he puts the car into gear and drives shakily to the pub. And the mailbox.

 

*

****_Earlier_  
  


**“** Mine to fuck, Alex?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Mine?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Jeesus, Alex…. Do you know how long I’ve wanted you like this?” Matt is tight behind her pressing his erection against her ass, left hand gently squeezing her breast, right hand pulling her hair back from her neck to make space for his lips. But his hand trembles against her nape, so very slightly, setting off a resonance and Alex’s heart clenches in on itself.

 

“Tell me.  Oh, God, Matt, tell me.”  The words fall breathily and like small, separate, stones:  teardrops already collapsing under the weight of longing, the stirring thread of Matt’s tongue, now circling just under her ear.

 

They are on set now. ON SET.  In Alex’s trailer.  The 25 minute break that in another dimension would have been filled with tea, staring at her annotated script, only maybe running lines with her delightful, off-limits co-star is now riot with possibility, desire, greed, carelessness. _Love_.  This is insane, thinks Alex. Then: it’s possible I have never been so turned on.  They are not just IN her trailer…. Matt had walked their entwined, kissing bodies toward the small window, and now her flushed face was framed by it, looking out through a thick lens of desire to workers fixing lights and, beyond, craft services.

 

“Oh, Alex, love… I’ve wanted you from the first time my hand touched your hand, the first time I heard your voice... wanted to run my fingers through your mad, amazing hair and pull you to me.” Matt pauses, then makes a small, laughing, confessional sigh: “ok, and also onto me.” _Into me._

 

“I want you to. Want you _too,”_ Alex says with a slight moan, reaching behind her to stroke Matt through his tweed trousers.  God he was quirkily impressive in full doctor get-up: old-fashioned and sexy-eccentric.  Before today, though, she would look at him and delight in the contrast between sweet, young, Matt and the simmering sadness and rage and depth of his character and how talented Matt was to invoke it.  Now she looked down to the floor to see the Doctor’s shoes and wondered how much of that otherworldly Doctor intensity was just Matt slipping through.

 

“Oh, I _know_ ,” Matt breathes.

 

Matt places his hand over hers and paces the movement of her arm, finally slowing it right down with an “ _OH FUCK, wait baby”_ and some controlled breathing.

 

“From now on every time I bring you tea, or comment on wardrobe or just say good morning, or even bloody HELLO, think of how much I want my hands along your waist and my lips on your neck, just. like. This.”  _And always, Alex_.  _Bloody hell, Matt. Stupid! Not the time for a declaration.  Thank GOD you didn’t say that out loud,_ Matt berates himself.  Focus. He punctuates his words with kisses, though.  

 

“… My fingers always almost inside you when they’re not already…” he recovers, “… and your hands in my pants, my dirty, perfect girl.”  

 

He feels young saying that to her. He feels old _doing_ this with her…. past a threshold.  He remembers feeling pretty good once he was routinely able to wait to come until the woman he was with had come at least once. Prided himself on twice, actually.  He tilts his head and smiles at that, involuntarily pleased. But it seemed baby steps compared to this, whatever this was. 

 

And Alex was the only one he would do this with, he was pretty sure.  The only woman he’d want this way. This way or any way?Holy shit: _The only woman I want_. 

 

He’d dabbled in the past with the demanding voice, he supposed, but it had made Daisy giggle and say ‘yes sir’ in the most compliant, jaunty  ‘hellooo-sailor’ way, so absent of real handing over of any consequence that he had never found it of interest before now. Christ.  On a more practical note, the tabloids would have a field day with a fan girl confessional of a Doctor Who spanking.   For another, he’d feel like an absolute wanker.  Pretending ( _being in? Fuck. What WAS this, Alex?)_ control of someone already in thrall to him would not be a turn on.  In control of Alex KINGSTON? Oh bloody hell yes. _I trust you, Alex._

He gets harder against her hand even just _thinking_ that, his cock reaching for her.  She smells like Jasmine. Breathe her in.  Yes, this was just them.  The words are out before he can check himself:

 

“Alex… Just so you know… this is just for us. No one else. I mean, I’ve never…” he lets his voice just trail off. _Fuck._ He hadn’t meant to use that voice: regular Matt.

 

They are almost perfectly still now, Matt’s hand over Alex’s hand over his erection... a particularly dirty version of holding hands, Alex notes.  Then, in the stillness, a small, snaking thought – and she’s glad he can’t see her face… she can imagine it a study in happiness and fear and confusion and longing and wariness – it feels like they’re taking a vow. 

 

“No one else,” she says, low.  Oh, _Stupid, Alex!!! stupid._

 

“Mine,” he says harshly, then, recovering, heart buoyant, cupping his hand across her jaw, welcoming her small soft bites to his palm.  _And, oh I’m yours, Alex._ He moves to hitch up her costume – thank the gods a dress today -- pulls down her underwear, strokes her newly-exposed skin and memory in him stirs of hitting her so _so_ hard and he makes his touch _so_ so soft in direct contrast. Alex’s breath hitches and she pushes back into his butterflying fingers.

“You can, you know,” she risks. 

  
“Can what?” Matt asks.

  
“You know.”

  
“I want to hear you say it, Alex. You want to be made to say it, Alex. So ask.”

  
“Spank me, again.”

  
“You’d like that.”  He says it with a combination of lust and awe, drawing out the word ‘like’ as if his tongue was rolling the word against her clit. Not a question – an affirmation. _Oh, my bad, bad, girl_.  Matt grins into the back of Alex’s hair but works to keep his body absent of the schoolboy delight that’s rushing through him.

                                                 

“Yes.” She was still more than a bit sore, truthfully, but even in the asking she could feel heat pool in her cunt, a slight thudding begin like distant drumming, saying it almost as dirty and vulnerable as doing it.

 

“But, oh, not yet, love. No time. Duty calls:  looks like they’re almost finished with the lighting, yeah?” he rushes, crushing his body against hers. “Eyes front, Alex.  But soon.  You’re to ask me every day. Understood?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Yes, you will.”

 

Then:  “Only me?” _God shut UP, Alex.  Can you be any more needy?_

 

“Yes,” he whispers, impossibly close to her ear: a claim; a promise.  Alex’s whole body hums.

 

He positions the head of his cock at her entrance and she arches her back and rolls her hips to give him a better angle.  He pushes in. She feels amazing, so tight but so so open to him, too, and slightly swollen, he thinks, from last night; this morning: he lingered on her body, he notes with crazy satisfaction, left traces beyond the slight bruising.  Alex turns her head… what… to kiss him?

 

“No. Head at the window, Alex.”

 

“Oh god,” she whispers. “The crew is right there.” She braces her hands against the wall of her trailer and tries to fix her features in an expression of vague boredom. Motivation? Maybe they will think I am watching for signs of rain. _Unless they see Matt fucking me from behind. Oh Shit._

 

“I know baby, just keep looking. I don’t even care if you come,” he says, low, cold. “I just need to fuck you now.”

 

_Oh god, his VOICE._  

 

“You probably shouldn’t come or they’ll notice you. Quiet now.” 

 

Even as the words are leaving this mouth, Matt has his right hand circling her clit, his pressure skilled and perfect, first in rhythm with his hips, then double time.  Her rock n’ roll lover.  Never thought she would have one again. The potent combination of the gruffness of his voice, of the sentiment, while his hands so artfully and compellingly said the opposite was thrilling.  Oh, she had so SO underestimated Mr. Smith she thinks as she comes hard, suddenly and silently, Matt’s hand never slowing, continuing to thrust, making her bite back a scream, all she can do to stop herself from batting his rhythmic, circling fingers away while he rolls her left nipple mercilessly with his other hand, speeds up and simply says: “again.”  And she does as he asks _._

_*_

**  
Earlier still**

A showered, sun-dressed, deliciously aching Alex sips tea in the kitchen, handbag on counter, finally ready to get out that door.  With Matt.  She smiles at that, unbelieving.  She’s even – _in so much trouble now_ \- blushing.  Her fingers run unthinkingly down her thighs, gently tracing the still-burning paths of his lips, his tongue...  _Oh, God._ She can’t help herself from closing her eyes for just a second. Remembering the way he looked at her _.  Into her._   Having once been subject to that gaze, she thinks that from now on she will probably always see it when she comes… lonely without it.  Bloody hell. He’s quite possibly ruined her even for herself, damn him.  Her need, which didn’t exist this same time yesterday, now seems exquisitely infinite.

 

If she was close enough to grab Matt’s hand she would just bring it between her legs – again? _what the hell?_ \- she’d had more action in the last 24 hours than she’d had in the entire preceding 12 months but every time he touches her she just _needs_.   Thankfully he’s across the room, on his mobile calling in to the set, his head out the window.  Doubtless a good thing she’s not proximate to those talented fingers. She’s staring at his ass, though. THIRTY. _fifty_. _Fuck it._

 

Actors.  Alex had sworn off them.  A number of times.  But oh she missed them in the bedroom. It’s not that it always had to be like this (and, really, it had never been quite like this before for her) but she did miss the mercurial, heart-on-sleeve companionship between actors in bed: playing someone’s idealized self to someone who could play as hard as she could was a distinct rush. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to act off-set.  Certainly not all the time. But, well, she understood the regular amount of acting and hiding and pretending that most people did anyway… that maybe especially women like her did.  _Self-preservation._ If you’re going to dance, might as well dance with the best.

 

This was more complicated, though, at least for her.  _don’t overthink it, Alexandra_.  Actors understood the beauty of turning off the camera, too.  No footlights. Over the long run it just wasn’t possible to be the warrior queen 24/7. Every once in a long while she wanted… needed… not to be seen as so bloody strong.  No one really knew … well, maybe Ralph, but he was a selfish bastard. She had let Ralph spank her, too. Twice: early on in what she now thinks of as her courtship and later, not long before he left her.  And both times she’d WISHED for a bloody safeword. It wasn’t that Ralph was particularly violent… but he was mean.   Mean between the sheets in both senses of the word… mean as in withholding, cheap, lacking generosity as well as being, well, actually a bit mean.  He’d made her feel awful.  Being across his lap was the ninth gate of hell.

 

Why had she let Matt? She had looked at him. And just jumped. _home._ She didn’t know how much of Matt was acting in that room… but she needed this Matt who pulled moans and need and secrets from her… and she adored him in the context of what she’d begun to think of as the other Matt, pre-THIS-Matt, of course.  Four years of admiring and wishing this beautiful, built-by-football and strong women and stunning disappointment and mad luck boy well. Four years of being happy for his success, certain of his kindness, his friendship, his decency and always at least a bit in lust with his easy, oddly eccentric, even old-fashioned charm and his uneasy, irregular beauty. Put together this new Matt – generous, loving, talented, trustful, _knowing_ , now looking at her with such open greed, hot as beautiful hell with kinks possibly, just possibly, deeper than her own was the culmination of everything she had forgotten she needed. _I love you._

 

*

 

Matt is brilliant on the phone, if he does think so himself:

 

“Sure, yeah, 30 minutes….  Yeah, lucky!  That’s what I told her, too.” He casts Alex a pointed, laughing glance. ”We’ll be right in.”

 

“And?”  She wants to sound amused but, in truth, she’s a bit worried and that shadow plays in her voice. It’s ridiculous, really, calling in lies to work.  But so worth it.

 

And she’s earned goodwill on set – she’s never been anything but utterly professional and accommodating, never a diva, never one to saunter in late or – oh god – never one to be so utterly consumed by an insatiable need to confess her need to feel... what?...  So _utterly owned by Matt Smith_ …  oh, bloody hell … _that she didn’t even want to step out of the scene_.  It was ridiculous.  Cunt pounding.  It sent her heart _life_ racing.

 

“… And I said we’d be right in.  You, love, had a flat and I” – he pops a handful of green grapes into his mouth and offers her one, placing it between her lips, gently, “just happened to see you on the side of the road.  I saved you.”

 

He punctuates that last bit with a smile and a gentle bop to her nose.  She is wearing no make-up.  She doesn’t look young – she looks like Alex. Gorgeous. Every year she’d worked on Who she grew more utterly beautiful, he thought.  The set’s bright light. Her face illuminated by her wicked sense of fun, her self-deprecating kindness, her wisdom, and, obviously, by very very dirty fantasies. Mrs. Robinson, indeed.  Alex Kingston: the point at which fantasy and reality met. 

 

Alex looks at him expectantly.

 

Oh, right.  “We’re waiting for roadside assistance and then we’ll be driving right in.”  _Your hand in my hand._   He casts her a lovely, full, smile, and takes her hand, then, not even letting it drop as Alex struggles with one free arm to find her keys, juggle her bag and lock the door behind them. He just places a tiny kiss to captive knuckles.

 

“Ohh… shall we move my car away from my spot and to the side of the road?” Alex almost giggles as they reach the lot.

 

“Oi, we’re not SPIES, Kingston.”

 

“Could be,” she says with a smile.

 

“Would you like that?” Matt says, suddenly sounding a bit nervous, if game, she thinks.

 

“Relax, Matt.” Alex arches a brow at him and seems all at once the intimidating woman of yesterday afternoon again, although she’s smiling.  “No need to rush out and get spy costumes.”

 

Matt flushes.  “I don’t need any costumes, Alex.  I…”

 

“I know,” Alex interrupts him, her voice low and soft.

 

“Good.”

 

“Sorry.” Then, words almost sticking in her mouth – she does not want to have this conversation now… but she needs just to talk to regular Matt, to make sure he’s ok:  “Did you like it?” She asks, her tone even, not a hint of flirt or direction. _Oh God, Matt, if you didn’t like it you are an even better actor than I thought._

 

“Yes, Alex, of course I liked it. Surely you could tell? Blimey.”  He draws that last word out like a whistle.  She bites her lip at that and smiles and his heart pounds to see it. God she’s infuriatingly dense sometimes. _I will not hurt you, Alex._   “I liked it. I like it. Very much. All of it, you daft woman.” _Love it_. _You._ God she is gorgeous, he thinks.  _Drawn to you._

It was more.  Matt felt like Alex had climbed inside him and, oh, he wanted to keep her there.  The past 24 hours had been the most intimate and most confusing of his life.  But there was one thread of enormous clarity, too, running through a background hum of questions and hauntings and misapprehensions and, well, performance anxiety alongside the thrill of the ovation:  he loved her.  True, Alex was the one who had surrendered and wept and said yes… but something had broken open in him, too. This wasn’t sex out of context.  Four years, after all.

 

“Good.” She averts her too-expressive–for-these-situations eyes. Matt runs his index finger along her jaw, drawing her into his orbit.  _Look at me._

 

“I see you, Alex.” _Love you.  Always._ And he just has to kiss her.  Tender and small and sweet, one hand warm on the impossibly graceful curve of that Kingston waist. And wills her to know.

Matt’s fingers leave her skin reluctantly, breaking the spell to open the car door.

“Get in, love.” 

 

Ignition. One hand on the steering wheel, he edges into traffic, snaking his other hand to grasp hers again.  She squeezes back, gently. 

 

“Um… “ he begins. 

 

_Nervously_ , she thinks. She opens her lips, not sure what to say when it comes to her  - she knows what she wants to do. Not a question, but an answer: 

 

“Yes.”

 

“Yes?”  Matt repeats, a bit confused. 

 

She leans in, all River now:  “Yeesssss,” she breathes.

 

“Do you mean?...”  Damn. She’s doing it again.  How she manages to make him into the most fumbling version of the Doctor imaginable is part of her frightening charm, he thinks.  It’s Amy’s wedding scene all over again.  What the HELL is she saying yes to?

 

What am I saying yes to? Alex wonders.  Is this ok?  Can it continue? The holding hands part? The other part? Did I like it, too? She smiles, just remembering.  Yes, she thinks, to all of it.  I trust you Matt. _Love you:_ “Yes,” the word smiling.

He risks a sideways half-smile in return, the sexy, superior, incredulous one she loves so much, the one that had sent shivers down her spine when he’d smiled it for the camera, leaning in and whispering ‘that’s just a fairy tale.’  Bloody hell… were all of their scenes foreplay? Quite possibly.

 

Eyes mostly still on the road as he rounds the bend, Matt swallows and starts again:  
  


“Should we maybe talk more about this?”

 

“Yes,” Alex ventures.  Then, a bit tentative, a lovely, lilting upward-sliding voice – “but tomorrow?” She smiles.  “Or even the day after?” she gives him the dirtiest, greediest look.  Matt turns to her with a full on smile that lingers as his eyes reluctantly leave her face to refocus on traffic.  Tomorrow he can do.  And his question is answered – how will today go?  Well, with any luck, much the same way as last night.  And this morning. Except the work bit.  So maybe not forever.  _What do you WANT, Matt?_

 

”Every second more precious then, yeah?”

 

She is blushing. BLUSHING. Alex Kingston is sitting beside him and blushing. _I want HER. YOU Alex._ He still can’t say it.

“Matt,” she says, “when we get to work we will work brilliantly, yeah?”

 

“We always do.”

 

“We always do,” she echoes.

 

*

 

**The next week**

Alex twists her wrists around the silk restraints twice to tighten them …  Matt had left them loose, degree of restraint up to her and she knew if she wanted to she could escape them handily.  She wouldn’t want to.  _Where’s the fun in that?_   Three times, then.

 

She was face down on the mattress, utterly naked, waiting for him. And, oh, he was making her wait. Damn him. Then: footsteps. He speaks from the doorway:

 

“You’ll be gone 11 days.”  It’s not a question.  He knows.  They’d talked about it over dinner and a decent sparkling wine, a laughing, happy dinner, both ordinary and special.  It had been a week since that first kiss.  

 

He knew she needed to go – of course he did. He loved that about her… that she would even risk stretching herself too thin just to make a school pageant an ocean away.  But he would most definitely miss her. Miss this crazy thing they were building…. Whatever it was…. Potent and strange and demanding and interesting and hot as fuck.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Alex, do you remember your safeword?” His voice was level, without much inflection at all.  God he was good, she thought.

 

“Of course - Juliette. Going to make me use it?” she teases, instantly regretting it. She didn’t want a lighthearted romp. 

 

“Entirely up to you, love – I’m going to do what I like.  It happens to be what you like. Over any time you say. But otherwise my terms, Alex, understood?”  

 

His cool hand is on her ankle, then, instantly warming and she feels him slipping a silk loop past her foot.  _Interesting_.  Alex offers no resistance as he gently tugs her legs apart and she can feel herself being tied to the bottom bedpost, too – now the other leg - spread, not uncomfortably wide, but tied securely enough that movement was difficult. She tests with gentle tugs and a sideways twist to look at him just as he presses a kiss to her ankle and lifts his head, their eyes meeting.  God, he is SO hot in that moment, skin pale, arms strong, that gorgeous, heavy schoolboy hair… but it’s his eyes that get her – when they catch hers they leap from an unfathomable depth … from Matt concentrating on the scarf, on the rhythm of his words, so attentive to her breathing … to a look so purely delighted, and generous and electric.  _Oh, he couldn’t. Could he?_ Matt smiles a warm smile, then. It draws out something broken in her. And mends it.  He must see something shift in her, she thinks…   _Good lord, can he just tell?_ because now he offers her a cheeky wink.  The picture of that adoring, winking boy hanging on to her captive ankle  … she has to take a gasping breath of air.  

_“Understood?”_ he asks again _._ This time his voice is harsh, lust-filled, but the wink hangs like an echo.

 

“Yes.” God, how does he just _know_. She ups the ante: “I shouldn’t leave you,”

 

“No, Alex, you shouldn’t.  I could starve without you – the taste of you on my tongue, the feel of you under my hands. Fucking you when I need to ..” At that he moves to sit next to her on the bed to stroke between her legs, his fingers first circling her entrance, teasing, then moving skillfully to her clit. The one hand is at her breast, too, rolling and pinching her nipple just past the point of comfort. She makes a tiny, gasping sound. “Oh, I already miss that sound, Alex. Make it again: I want to hear you.”  Matt enters her, then, with three fingers, reaching down, stroking her perfectly, still twisting that nipple, making a perfect circuit of want, and she whimpers as he’d asked, open-mouthed, panting a small ‘oh God, Matt’ into the air.

 

He removes his fingers, leaving her to make a small writhing, twisting motion against the mattress, achingly empty now.

 

“What do you think I should do, Alex? I want you to remember.”

 

The question hangs. 

 

And hangs.

 

Alex feels the air, cool on her skin.  Then Matt’s hands either side the curve of her waist, now his fingers drawing gentle, warm patterns on her back. She can hear Matt’s breathing and feel his patient waiting. He’s going to make her say it. Oh, damn you Matt, evil genius.

 

Ok, then.  A small, whisper:  “leave marks.”

 

“oh, Alexxxxx….” Matt almost hisses.  “Mark you? Oh, Yes.  I’d like that.  Very. Very. Much. 11 strokes for 11 days? 

 

She shivers and rubs her clit into the mattress:  “Yes.”

 

“Is it enough?” he presses his hand to the small of her back, fingers spread, holding. Matt’s voice is still mostly uninflected but she thinks the question is genuine.  More than enough, she thinks.  And how will he want to do it? And marked _where_? She’s a bit scared.  She groans as she anticipates having to beg. She barely registers that she’s already pulling on the scarves, her body grinding into the mattress.  Yes, she’ll beg.  And he’s barely touched her. _physically_.

 

“Yes.” Then:  “Please, Matt.  I want you to.”

 

His hand is gone and he’s moved to the foot of the bed.

 

“Why?”

 

Oh DAMN him. Her cunt pounds. “To remember you. Make me think of you every day.” _Us_ Alex is already speaking with a bit of a moan.  And he’s just talking. _Listening._

“And?”

 

_Jesus, Matt_. Right, then. She crosses over:  “I need this. I need to let you”

 

“Oh, yes,” he hisses. “I’ve got you, Alex. Just let me.”

 

“oh, Please, Matt. yes”

 

“Every morning I want you to touch yourself Alex.  Will you do that? Before you get out of bed.  Touch yourself and think of me?” She can hear him stroking himself, now, and the image is thrilling.  Then he stops and rummages around a bit on the floor.  What is he doing?

 

“I’ll always think of you when I come…” she says breathily.

 

“Oh, no, Alex…you’re not to come when you’re away.”

 

THWACK.  Something thin and fast strikes her across the top of her thighs, taking her breath away, mostly from the shock.

 

“Is that ok?” Matt’s voice is low and quick, like a stage whisper, running a tentative hand along her hip. She just nods.

 

“What is that?”

 

“Riding crop.”  It’s his outside-of-the-scene voice again.

 

“You don’t ride.”

 

“Sure I do.  Do now.“

 

“Do you know what you’re doing?”

 

THWACK – this time he hits with considerably more force, along both buttocks.

 

“Don’t, Alex.”

 

She stops thinking then and gives herself over with a small cry and as if by way of acknowledgement she feels Matt’s lips on her ass, his breath hot over the stinging line.

 

He straightens up again and walks to the other side of the bed for a different angle.

 

He’s talking to her again: “Alex, every day that you are away I want you to get so so so close, until you feel yourself panting and begging me to let you come.  Don’t cheat: right to the edge. But, Alex, then you stop. Understood?”

 

_Wait - What?_  “Yes,” she whimpers, “don’t let me come.”  God he is perfect.

 

THWACK – this time the blow lands just under her ass.  She fights to control her breathing. That’s three.

 

“Good.  And every night, Alex.  Before you go to bed.  I want you to close the bathroom door, and look at these marks, and touch yourself.  Touch yourself until you need to scream. But you are not to come. When you think you have to stop, keep going, right to the edge.  But no going over. I want you to go to sleep aching for me. I want this be hard for you, Alex.”

 

THWACK.  This one brings tears to her eyes. She thinks it must criss-cross the first.  She’s never done this before.  It feels so different from his hand. 

 

“Oh, GOD, Matt.”

 

THWACK. Shit: her back.

 

_thwack … a gentle tap this time and – no -  she feels him take a step back.  Taking aim._

_THWACK._ She pulls on her restraints and sobs into the mattress.

 

She misses his hand, the feel of his skin.  This is what he wants, though, and she can feel her cunt flutter and open: she needs to give it to him simply because he has asked.

 

“need you to.”

 

THWACK THWACK

 

_More, Matt, please, more._ Is she saying that out loud? She can’t seem to speak, but she hears a keening wail that sounds like his name.

“Oh, God, Alex… can’t wait.” He trails the riding crop along the length of her thigh right to her cunt.  A gentle tap: “Wider.”  She feels the weight of him climbing onto the bed to join her.

 

_God, Darling, yes._ She tries to say it, but can’t form words.Alex loosens her wrist almost entirely now so she can shift up and he can get inside her, presses her face into the mattress with a small sob and arches.  But Matt doesn’t enter her right away. Instead his fingers fly to her ankles, quickly undoing his knots.  He needfully urges her onto her back, the long, loose restraints at her wrists now twisted across each other, pining her hands above her head.  Her back stings against the contact with the sheets and she winces but opens her eyes to find him. _Matt._

 

The instant she does he thrusts into her, deeply and so greedily.  His eyes never leave her eyes. It feels like fire.  It feels like bliss.

 

“God, Alex, if you could see yourself. So gorgeous, baby.  Thank you… thank you…”  He thrusts into her so deeply, so quickly after that – god his footballer’s stamina – and she’s screaming already into his eyes, pulling at the silk to ground herself; this is what abandon looks like.  It pulls a shattering orgasm out of Matt and his fingers dig bruisingly into her hips.  “Oh, fuck, Alex, I love you.”  His lips find hers and his hand cups her breast.

 

_Wait. What?_

Before his words can really register in her head, his fingers are inside her. “Shit. Sorry, baby. Couldn’t hold off. Shh.. I want you to be _so_ happy. You have no idea.” Matt fucks her with his fingers while kissing her deeply, only breaking the kiss the better to hear her moan.  He pulls his fingers out, then, gently and circles three of them wetly around her clit as she rubs back against him, her painful movements against the bed rewarding her with an incredible awareness of the geography of her body: charted, explored.  Oh Matt: she is beyond talking and she feels the pressure build impossibly inside her and now his tongue is licking along the length of her neck and he’s whispering -- “want to mark every inch of your body, Alex” -- and she shatters and he thrust his fingers deep inside her once more.

 

“Oh, yes.  That’s it, baby.” Then, in his low, rolling voice: “But not again. Not until you come home. _to me._ You want that.”  It’s not a question but she answers.

 

“Yes.” It comes out as a rasp. She clears her throat and tries again:  “Oh, Matt.”

 

“You don’t want to come without me, do you Alex?”  He helps her a bit clumsily out of the loose restraints at her wrist and helps her to her knees and her arms fly around him.  They’re face to face, on their knees on the centre of the bed and she can see the riding crop now, and his pants in a heap on the floor, but nothing really seems real except Matt’s skin, his body against her body. _I’m only half in the world of this bedroom_ , Alex thinks, kissing his forehead languidly, as he nips at her neck, vaguely registering him running careful hands along the route of the crop, cupping her ass now, feeling tentatively along her thighs. Matt feels a small, raised line and she feels him feeling it and a circle completes.

 

“No. I don’t think I could,” she admits, pressing herself tightly against him, their faces so close now they are sharing breaths.  It’s true.  She never thought she could feel this way again.

 

“Oh, Alex, love.  God you are so beautiful.”  Then he is bringing her gently down to the mattress and bringing the sheets over them and she drifts off to him pressing kiss after kiss to her kips, her still-wet cheeks, into her hair. Matt falls asleep almost an hour after Alex, staring at her in wonder, his hand in her hair, his hand on his cock _what you Do to me, Alex_ and along the trace of every blow.     

 

*

 

**_The next day – the day of the flight, on set_** :

 

 

Matt thinks hard about what to say. Finally commits:

 

_Dear Alex,_

_I’m sorry…_

 

It’s a start. His hand hovers over the page for a long time.  What does he really want to say?  The answer is simple; the answer is impossible: ‘it’s true Alex, I love you. Sorry I’m writing this in a note instead of – I don’t know – looking into your eyes and just telling you.’ That’s what he wants the note to say.  But Matt wasn’t entirely sure if saying that might wreck things.  He definitely remembered telling her he loved her  -- he hadn’t meant it to slip out but, well, it had.  And she hadn’t mentioned it.  And she was leaving for L.A. on the evening flight.  He needed to tell her: _man up, Matt._ His hand still doesn’t move. Finally he writes ‘Matt’ at the bottom, like he’s a small boy frozen in the face of a school essay and sighs deeply.

 

Alex was clearly a fan of his more in-control persona and, well, he did love that about her… and he loved _being_ with her like … that.  He had never – Never - Wanted like that, like this – it was amazing because it was Alex and it was also amazing because, well, it just was.  The talents of his body aligned with the talents of his mind and the sex was boggling.  But somewhere inside there was a nagging thought: _oh,_ _I love her_ and all I know is that she really loves sex with … the pretty hot bloke I’ve mostly just bloody INVENTED. Fuck.  It was brilliant. And he wanted the real her. All of her.  Every her. Was Alex being genuine or going for a BAFTA? Why did she have to be so bloody talented? She still didn’t want to talk.  Not really. Not about this. Did she want the real him? Every him? Did she love him outside of the bedroom? Or was the cost of being with her going to be much too high?

 

Fuck, he whistled under his breath.  So confusing.

After a very long time, staring into space and willing words, he presses on:

 

_Dear Alex,_

_I’m sorry … that talking has been so difficult.  My fault, I know.  Jesus, Alex, you do still make me so nervous once I get my clothes back on, love. I should be able to SAY things to you – you of all people are entitled to know what I’m thinking - but it’s hard.  I’m trying, yeah? So, here goes.  This is me, going for it: I trust you, Alex.  I love you.  I really do. You know it.  And I know you heard me say it. There. I didn’t want you to think that was an accident.  Well, saying it then was an accident, but no less true._

_Don’t feel obligated – I just need you to know. And, well, I hope you’ve always felt it when I touched you.  I am so. SO. in love with you, Alexandra Kingston.  I’m a coward that I have to write this down rather than say it to you, but this way I don’t have to see your eyes when I do.  Your lovely, amazing eyes, Ms. Kingston.   And you have something to read on the plane!  Long plane rides without a declaration of love are pretty rubbish._

_When you get back, let’s talk properly, yeah?  I will miss you so much. Don’t be scared, love – you can drive._

_Love,_

_Your Matt xx_

 

He folds the paper carefully, slips it into an envelope, writes Alex’s name on it, then, feeling lighter and braver crosses that out and scrawls ‘Matt loves Alex’ on the envelope instead.  It makes the slightly stilted note inside redundant, but it makes him smile. Maybe he should give her the envelope instead – just like a script, sometimes the simpler second draft is best.

 

He knows she’s scheduled to shoot her scene soon and is probably still in make-up.  He’ll sneak it into her carry-on bag.

 

*

 

Alex gets out of make-up early and goes to find Matt. 

 

She stops when she sees him at the picnic table, alone, working on something… she loves to watch him now, drink him in and she moves stealthily so she doesn’t disturb him, but she’s already very close and he’s oblivious . Bless. What is he writing? She’s close enough to say hello now when she sees it: pen in hand, poised mid-air, Matt is clearly struggling over a note whose meaning is plain: 

 

_Dear Alex,_

_I’m sorry…_

_Matt_

 

He lets out an aggravated  ‘fuck.’ 

 

Oh. oh.  Oh, NO.

 

Alex’s feet propel her silently backward until she can disappear before he sees her.  She feels physically sick and more vulnerable in this moment than being spread out across his bed could ever make her feel.

 

How could she have been so wrong? Again. And so, so, utterly.  _I really thought…_ Her back against the cool damp brick of a wall, now, she can feel the small welts.  Fuck, Matt, what on earth were you thinking?  That was NOT breakup sex! she wants to scream at him and maybe give him a hard slap. Eleven slaps, you bastard. You just don’t do that to someone.  To me.  _Of course they do, Alex._

 

She doesn’t really need to be told what he feels sorry about.  It all works out the same way, whatever the trigger:  Them? It? Her? Him? Same destination. It’s also the kind of letter that often never gets sent.  But she can’t unsee it; unhear Matt’s frustrated, trapped sigh. Oh, damn you.  There goes a tear.  Probably only has five minutes to fix her make-up. Fuck.  Her world is in steady-state, she thinks – the more happiness one day, the bigger the blow the next. Pinnacles and ditches.  She looks to the ground. _Damn you, Matt Smith_.

  
Even if he didn’t exactly want to stop seeing her entirely, she would never be able to have sex like that with him again. Or any sex. Her heart thuds. _Oh._ It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him anymore… this was Matt… but in the misreading of the situation, she wasn’t sure she couldn’t really trust herself.  _Heartbroken_.  It had felt equal – she’d marveled at that, actually.  So So hard to find someone who didn’t project a million wrong things onto her.  Matt had given back more than he took.  He’d matched her.  The feelings had seemed so mutual.   _I’d thought … I’d  really thought... the way he looked at me…_ Gifted bloody lying actors.  Or she’d just projected onto him.  Projected a million wrong things onto HIM. Christ. We do what we say we hate, yeah? She had 20 years on him. What she wanted was too much. It was seriously the most intense sex she had ever had. Probably overwhelming for him.  She had a few tricks up her sleeve, too, that she had fantasized sharing with him… but Christmas and cocoa, too, lounging on his beat-up Chesterfield, skating, showing him her house in L.A..  Jesus. Had he sensed that she was just too much? She was, she knew. Oh, Matt:  I’m sorry.  At 50 maybe getting that single brilliant week is already more than she could ever expect.  She can’t shag fantasy Matt forever.  He already has a full-time acting job.  She’d been SO wrong and unfair and she was SO sorry.  So, SO, sorry. He’d tried to talk and she’d kept putting him off.

 

This can’t go on.  She’d like to be angrier with him, truthfully, but she’s only angry with herself. And very, very sad.  Juliette!, she screams, inside. Juliette… a whispering voice.  It’s over.  It’s good that she’s leaving for America.  She doesn’t want a scene – still wants _needs_ Matt to drive her to Heathrow after they wrap– she’ll never make the plane otherwise.  And – ok - she wants to sit beside him one last time. And pretend. _Masochist much, Alex?_   Only part-time, she reminds herself: _Pull yourself together, Alex._ And she does. Thank God the scene she’s about to shoot isn’t with him. 

She finishes her work against the green screen – two takes – and retreats to her trailer.  Writes a short note: _‘My dear, dear Dear Matt…’_

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Second Circle one of Dante's nine circles of hell. The second circle is lust. (And if you're reading closely, and wondering, the ninth circle is treachery).


	3. Eleven days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finding herself on a BA flight to LAX from Heathrow, lifting up her shirt ... oh… fingers now, like they have a mind of their own, teasingly pulling down her waistband, too, seeing the string of tiny raised marks along her back, across her ass, as she pulls her pants right down to her knees and stares, is new: ‘oh, there’s a shot for the paparazzi’, she thinks, giving the mirror a half-hearted, over-the-shoulder wink. And Alex remembers what Matt had said: “look at them every night before you go to bed.” Well, Alex? God help her, she was doing it. So this was the goodbye sex, then. The goodbye sex they hadn’t had. Fuck. Because, oh… in that moment he had meant it. So had she. 11 days? That was something she could do. Wanted to do. Bound to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this update took so horribly long. Still figuring this out. Thanks very much for your patience... if anyone is still reading this ;-) I'll finish it soon: promise.

Alex is well–practiced at making her way through Heathrow largely unobserved and she’s especially grateful for that, now … now that tears really threaten to fall. Damn.  Him.

Time is tight for the flight and she focuses only on getting though security, boarding pass already in hand, no checked luggage, mechanically pulling off her boots now, head still down, letting her body shudder just a bit.  Then she’s walking past the Starbucks and into the liminal zone between here and Salome and that thought lets her heart breathe a bit, a doubtless brilliant student-written production on the near horizon, her daughter’s forever open arms.  Breathe, Alex. And she does.

Damn. The funny thing is with something like this, nothing fundamental had changed, not really, not in terms of how she felt.  It changed her understanding of what it had meant to HIM, and how she should have know _professional pretender_ …  but what it had meant to her in that moment?  That same lovely pocket of trust and desire. _Love._  

 

*

And so she feels the tears burning behind her eyes again as she boards and finds her seat. Single, near the front of the plane. Just her. She jams her bag into the overhead compartment with more force than is strictly necessary, and almost falls to her seat, then, surprised by sudden exhaustion and grateful for early boarding and a welcome glass of Prosecco, already signaling the attendant for another.  _What is Matt doing, now?_ He’s found it.  He’s opened it.  It’s done.

 

But she worried, of course about how Matt would feel getting the note. Relieved, she expected.  But she wasn’t foolish – she knew better to think that it would be easy for him.  Or that it had all been make-believe play.  She knew it had been real enough. And she knew even from that visual of him, head bent over the picnic table writing ‘I’m sorry’ that it wasn’t easy; he really was sorry.  He was sorry it wasn’t going to work.  She was sorry FOR him.  She hoped that he would feel let off the hook, believe that somehow it was a bit more mutual _I will always want you_ and that, as a consequence, he wouldn’t feel an obligation to her happiness.

 

There.  She’d said it: her happiness. She’d been happy. Damn him.  Well. Can’t make people be what you want them to be. She knew that maybe better than anyone else.  A decade of life spent remaking herself. _For someone else_. She wouldn’t do that to him.

 

Still, she worried that he was hurt.  She wished that she could at least text him.  Instead she puts her phone on airplane mode, settles back, looking at the tarmac. The sky is dark; moisture clings to the outside window.  The plane begins to taxi.  She tries to close her eyes, but sleep doesn’t come.  When they finally reach cruising altitude she’s very tempted again to queue a brief note. What would it say? 

 

_Dear Matt…. No, I’m the one who’s sorry, darling… god. You are perfect.  This was perfect.  I wish that there was some way for it to have been perfect for you.  How can we make this work?  How can we continue?  What do you need from me?_

 

I’ll still take scraps, she thinks. Exactly what she promised herself she would never, never do.  Ridiculous, Alexandra.  She wasn’t that person anymore. And she finds her line, then.  That one she can never cross again.  It holds her up and she leans against it, like a stick. Never again.  Never someone whose love was incommensurate to her own.  She used to think there was something wrong with the way SHE loved.  But no… and it had taken far too long to piece herself together for her to give in to one-sided bliss.

 

She unbuckles herself and gets up.  Goes to the tiny airport bathroom.  She can admit, too, that she’s sore. She’s actually SORE.  What a ridiculous thing. She literally would be marked for 11 days.  And as brave as she’d been she hadn’t really done _this_ before.  Oh, she’d certainly toyed with the theatrics… Come on... you couldn’t actually live her life without being tied up once or twice for a spanking or, ok, bit more than that in her case – or exchanging the favour.  But certainly finding herself on a BA flight to LAX from Heathrow, lifting up her shirt ... oh… fingers now, like they have a mind of their own, teasingly pulling down her waistband, too, seeing the string of tiny raised marks along her back, across her ass, as she pulls her pants right down to her knees and stares, is new: ‘oh, there’s a shot for the paparazzi’, she thinks, giving the mirror a half-hearted, over-the-shoulder wink.  And Alex remembers what Matt had said: “look at them every night before you go to bed.”

 

Well, Alex?  God help her, she was doing it.  So this was the goodbye sex, then. The goodbye sex they hadn’t had.   _Fuck_  Because, oh… in that moment he had meant it.  So had she. Well. Not the part now about NEVER coming again without him.  Forever is too long a time. As fetching as Matt Smith was and as much as she knew she would NOT be looking for anyone else, she was rather fond of both sonic screwdriver and fantasy.  He’d be part of that now, anyway.  But 11 days? That was something she could do.  Wanted to do. _Bound to him._

 

Watching her reflection over her left shoulder she brought one hand up to her right breast, her right hand down between her legs.  Found herself.  Wet, waiting.   _Even now?_ So crazy. Oh god, Matt – Why?  She turns and leans against the locked door now, slides her fingers between soft folds, one finger testing, entering, still watching herself in the mirror.  Imagines him behind her now, her hands in her hair.  Everybody she’s ever been with has had a fetish for this hair, she smiles vaguely, incredulous.  Feels him there and in this second feels beautiful.  Replays that night.  Replays spreading her hands out, now twisting them over her head, his hands inside her.  She replays the feeling of the crop on the back of her leg, the back of her ass, runs one hand across all the raised marks she can reach. Reverentially. _the last ones._  And thinks of him… the way his arm had been so close and his heart, too.  Speeding up.  She feels her legs spread wider of their own accord. She could actually come right now.  As heartbroken as she was, he was still the hottest _best_ thing that had happened to her. _Pretend it’s not over._

 

_Beautiful hot. His mouth on her nipple, now his voice at her ear – “fuck…god, you’re MINE, my queen… whore… cunt… beg me… **I love you** ” --  his cock hitting so deep she could barely see and she relives her legs wrapping around him in that moment, heel at his ass, driving him unbelievably further into her and just SCREAMING and finally, when she could make words again: Oh, God, yours, Matt. _

 

Dear God YES!, Her fingers lightning now, and then she remembers : “you’re not to come.”  If this is the last bit she’ll have of him, she’ll take it.  She wants to pull her hand away quickly, make it easy, but she hears his voice:  ‘I want it to be hard for you, Alex.’ Lord.  She slows but continues on, her breathing coming as a rasp and she wills her mouth shut and swallows a moan. She’s so close and she can almost hear him, like he’s right there with her: “no you’re not to come without me – you don’t want to come without me.” She moves her hands, throws her head back and utters a barely audible gasp, full of longing and hurt: ‘No, Matt, I don’t.”

 

**

Driving toward the bar he had in mind near his London flat, Matt felt a bit the way he’d felt on their first night, the night he’d taken the risk.  Heightened insistence that he wasn’t actually the fumbling boy she thought he was At ALL. _prove yourself_. _You did and it wasn’t enough._ Just … fuck … Alex.  His hands tight on the steering wheel he realized he had moved through numb and now felt panicked.  Panic? Could a broken heart make you actually hyperventilate?  Only at the hands of Alex Kingston he thought, ruefully.  Everything about her was extra; extreme.  But he loved that about her, he thought, _thrilled him,_ his heart already softening – instant - and unable to keep her out.  Her note was like a body blow and while he steeled himself against it, it changed the secrets of his heart not one bit.

 

Matt was a master at conquering nerves, though. It was his job.  And he was bloody good in bed… girls threw themselves at him, enough to make his head swell, his cock…. Boys offered, too… though flattered he didn’t say yes, but he was confident he could pull almost anyone in any bar in London.  Fuck.  It wasn’t real, though. _Need you._  Matt was tempted to take some girl home. Oh ya.  ‘Course he was.  But… bloody hell…  he wasn’t that boy anymore.  And what he wanted wasn’t going to happen with some random bird.  _Oh, love._   So he drives past the pub toward home, instead.

 

**

Matt grabs a beer from the fridge. Drinks it quickly, turns on some music and thinks.  Should he go after her? He takes out her note again.

 

Oh, Juliette. Oh, Alex.

 

Even holding the note his hands are holding her hips and holding her down and holding her tethered to the earth _HIM_.  Oh, he sees himself spreading, his hands … rubbing them against her ass, and spreading her cheeks, pressing his thumb to the tiny nub, wishing he had done this.

 

He thought, really, he would know every, every, part of her.  All of her secrets. That they had time.  He strokes himself almost involuntarily with his right hand as he imagines his left thumb rubbing lube over her entrance and slowly entering her.

 

_And his thumb is in … Feeling her gasp, and then he can feel Alex will herself to be more open to him._

 

He’d never been with a woman like Alex.  Nothing would ever be as hot as having somebody that incredible _amazing wise…_ _fuck… iconic_ be so incredibly responsive. To HIM. There had been nothing he’d suggested that she hadn’t leaned into. And the way she had led him with her body, too, her desire a vast canvas of want and risk. More: the click of their hearts.  Her talent, her low laugh, her generosity, the way her nose crinkled. He wasn’t the same.

 

He’d even booked 3 days off – and, oh, it had so cost him - knowing that after the interview day she was returning for on day 11 that she had that time free, too, and he had planned to spend it skin to skin, to spend it doing everything he had ever imagined. And, truthfully, being with her, his imagination had become more than a little bit more daring. And a lot dirtier.

 

His hand is moving quickly now on his cock.  God, Alex.  He’d wanted it to be so so different.  _I’ll come every night thinking of you._ Wanted, still, to think of her of her, so gorgeous and struggling and not coming … for him.  And he’d been going to make it up to her. Bloody hell yes. Plans to kiss her breathless and gently make love to her; plans to tie her up and worship her, fuck her every way she wanted to be fucked. Every way he wanted to fuck her… which would be the same thing.  

 

He was already missing her laugh, her morning tea ... There were going to be dinners, too, and theatre, and a band! – fuck, he’d booked a private pre-concert show for her _real music, Kingston_ \- and more mad declarations of love.  What a bloody disaster. Part of him was actively bracing for the inevitability of her finding his note, too – ‘Matt loves Alex.’  Fuck. He knew the letter he’d sent wouldn’t exactly cancel it out -  of course not -  but a bit of dignity, yeah?  It would muddy things just enough they could maybe agree to pretend he wasn’t in so so deep for her when she’d sent him adrift.  Adrift.  _WHY?_ He wanted – needed- to fold her back inside him, still wanted to give himself to her.  Alex.  Your careless hand on my fucking heart.  But I love you.  _And I need this._  What?  In spite of himself, Matt’s hand had wandered back to his cock.

 

His mind focused back on the current object of his fantasy – her ass.  In his mind he still sees it perfectly… a few soft bruises, his hands digging in to her hips gently guiding her down, the top of his cock just gently nudging. 

 

_“Is this ok, Alex?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Will you do this for me, Alex?”_

_“Anything for you, darling’’_

_“You want this, Alex?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“You want this, Alex?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Louder, Alex.  I need to hear you love. Tell me how much you want this.”  His cock nudging gently but relentlessly into her ass, guided now by his right hand, his left hand pressed firmly on her clit where she rocks and moans against it, greedy and without shame. His Alex._

_“Of fuck, yes, Matt, yes, anything. GOD.”_

_Her hips rocking as he gradually fits into the tight entrance and then he is thrusting in earnest, but mindful of her moans, letting her set the pace and now he is really fucking her and his fantasy is equal parts abandon and care; greed and listening._

_God, I love you like this Alex._

_And then he was saying it: “I love you, I love you, love you…”_

 

And he was moaning that out loud now, too, hips thrust into his hand and he imagined that she was screaming his name and crying, and opening herself up to him as he screamed I love you and spilled inside her. But really it was just all over his own fucking hand. And the fucking note. He’d jerked off onto the last piece of them.

 

They’d have to talk at some point. He honestly didn’t know how he was going to face her.  It really was going to be a fucking mess.

 

 ***

 

The next morning Alex awakes to the LA sunrise. Home. _Home?_ It feels late to her, but it’s still early on the coast.  She’s slightly aching … her heart, and her cunt.  And does as he’d asked.  Wants to.  She opens her eyes and looks up at the ceiling and conjures him, runs her fingers down her hips, right hand gently circling, just touching where he’d touched.  She was looking now for traces, looking for the last lingering signs of them: these were the goodbyes.

Goodbye to the slightly raised lines.   
Goodbye to the softly receding bruises.

They were already too light for her liking; already leaving her.

 

She laughs a bit at that. The thing is, there are only going to be very few people in the world who know you.  And Matt Smith, ready for it or not, had definitely known _touched_ a part of her that she kept well hidden. Both hands now travelling over her breasts, both hands now pinching at her nipples, her legs spread wide.  Her hips give a small involuntary roll.

  
With a frustrated groan Alex pulls the covers aside and quickly walks to the door and actually locks it – she never locks it against Salome, but makes an exception. This will only take a moment or two. She climbs back onto the bed and settles face down this time, remembering that last night with Matt, holding still, twisting her own restraints; her heart sobbing.

 

Grateful.

 

Connected.

 

_Oh, Alexandra Kingston that should turn you off_ … but it doesn’t. At all. Life’s funny like that. Relief is a gate.  He’d helped her reach the other side.

 

Her right hand snakes between her legs, holds herself open and she rocks, gently, remembering that first time, remembering all the times.  Three fingers now circling purposefully around her clit, hips grinding the mattress and she searches for a picture, first the image of Matt’s fingers, a shadow of his dark fringe then his soft, commanding voice, full of want and control _and love, I thought_.  MY, Alex, the voice says, lilting and certain and HIS.  _I was_.

 

Now she moans and has it, a burning memory she almost impossibly promises not to come to:

 

_“Well, you’ve already missed your morning chance.”_

_“No I haven’t Alex.  This morning I’m going to fuck your beautiful mouth. Don’t make us late.”_

_He’d urged her gently to her knees, then, sighed deeply when she’d shrugged off her robe. Naked, she’d taken him in her mouth, licking her tongue all along his length, hardening even more impossibly under her touch, warm, wet. She’d swallowed the tip first, then opened herself to take him in to the back of her throat. Hollowing her cheeks now, sucking rhythmically and groaning against him, sliding up and down.  He wove his fingers through her hair and thrust gently and she’d wanted to still his hips but stopped herself and in a moment of bravery put both hands behind her back, crossing them at the wrist._

_He’d come grabbing her hair, then, screaming: “Oh, Love, you are incredible, Alex.”_

_Then he’d pulled her to her feet and said simply: “And now love, we really are going to be late.  Pop in the shower. There’ll be time for turnabout later.” And there was._

 

Fuck. Alex feels the pressure mounting. Feels her fingers start to circle even more urgently and she rocks, grabs her nipple roughly, so roughly, with her left hand, puts two of her own fingers inside and says, in a whispered breath, a remembered echo of his voice:  ‘don’t come.’

 

And, oh, that alone is almost enough to make her shatter.  Alex pulls away her hand. 

 

Day one of the goodbyes, then. Day one is over.  The first of 11 days of goodbye.

 

She forces out a final thank you into the ether.  To a Matt in the parallel universe, who loves her.

 

***

 

Day 2: she touches herself to the image of him stroking her cheek, standing against the wall of his kitchen, hip to hip, barely moving inside her. His lying eyes.

 

Day 3: he chases her into the bedroom both of them giggling, breathless, collapsing onto the bed, soft kisses, before he takes both her wrists in his hands, places them above her head and whispers a chilling, low, whistling ‘don’t move’ and she doesn’t, then, for the next hour, as he pulls orgasm after orgasm out of her, as she remains statue-still but for the begging.  She can’t stop herself from coming. _Impossible._

 

Day 4 isn’t a memory, but a fantasy that actually wakes her up: lowering her cunt to Matt’s mouth, his arms outstretched, tied to her bed, grinding against him and every time she lifts up the dirtiest poetry pours out of him, begging and beautiful and almost bloody Shakespearean and so needy. _For her._  Won’t happen now, she thinks. It’s easy not to come day four.  And she can barely see those marks now.

 

It’s day 5 before Alex can’t stand it anymore. Grabs her phone to text him before she can change her mind:

 

‘Matt, how are you? Really?’ 

 

She struggles with the sign-off.  Xs seem inappropriate.  But she’d only been trying to shut one kind of door… not Matt out forever, she reasons.  She types one in: x.  Breathes out. Backspace.

 

Hits send.

 

She doesn’t expect an instant response – it’s well into the Cardiff workday.  But she slips the phone into the pocket of her robe, in case, and heads downstairs for coffee, and grabs the mail.

 

Two bills and a letter.  BBC envelope, her address handwritten, no return sender. Oh. She knows that hand. From him.  _Matt._ She tears it open with oddly angry fingers but pulls it out with her heart clutching.  It can’t be the ‘I’m sorry’ letter – too small.

 

Then she reads: ‘ _Dear Alex, It was brilliant. No regrets.  See you around, Dr. Song.  Matt._ ’

 

 

_WHAT? Oh you BASTARD._ Her eyes blinded with tears and feeling a humiliated RAGE she didn’t even know she was nursing, deeply buried – to spare YOU, Matt --  but surfacing now, a comet with a barbed-wire tail. Alex grabs for her phone and hits his number, muscle memory, unthinking, and even though it’s only ringing she’s already started to curse.

 

**

 

Matt’s drinking his tea at the picnic table. He hates this table now, he thinks.  No, he really doesn’t.  But the set feels cold.

 

The gentle alert of his phone startles him and when he sees the text – from ALEX – he actually stands up.  What should he do?  No, I’m really not ok, Alex. I’m really not.  And she’s read his love letter by now… and this isn’t an ‘I love you’ back.

 

He’s walking to his trailer.  Privacy.  Just in case.

 

And the phone actually rings.  Matt runs the last few steps to his trailer and opens the door and as soon as he closes it he answers and his voice is too high and too rushed and too vulnerable but he doesn’t care, he’s shaking, wants it too much: 

 

“Alex?”

 

And then she’s yelling at him from across the ocean, a sobbing, gulping dangerous voice:

 

“Oh, so you actually picked up you COWARD you BASTARD… FUCK YOU … God I can’t believe what an utter fool I was – again ...”

 

And then a flurry of words he can’t quite decipher, finally settling into a steadier rhythm.

 

“Alex” he tries, but he doesn’t think she hears him. She’s not even taking a breath between insults anymore.  What the fuck? 

 

Then: “Matt, you didn’t deserve to be let off the hook… you should have just fucking owned up to what you wanted and who you ARE.  This mattered and you threw it _me_ away…. “ She sobs and he tries a gentle “shh, Alex, I don’t know what you…” into the phone, but she’s got a second wind.

 

“God, the SORRY I could understand.  The goodbye note that said I’m sorry I could deal with.  Barely, Matt, but I could.  This frat boy letter is just cruel.  And I never, ever thought you were. “  Her voice is whispered and dangerous now and so, so sad his heart breaks.

 

“Alex, I’m...”

 

He’s cut off:  “I really, really hate you right now.”  The words are bullets. “You’ve got a lot to learn about sex and love and life and you can be the pretend rock star all you like and be a prick forever, but this will be a bloody pinnacle for you, even with a good bye letter you still had me doing what you wanted every single fucking day and I am just – maybe I do deserve this …. I thought you were a mindreader… and if you are and you still did this you are a fucking monster. What are you even thinking Matt?  I didn’t even get the courtesy of the note where you say you’re sorry.” It’s a whisper.  She’s sobbing.

 

“Alex, love…”

 

“Don’t,” she gulps dangerously. And the line is dead.

 

He dials back, but of course she’s not picking up.   And a sharp rap at this door is calling him back to set.

 

He continues to look at the phone, stunned. _An ‘I’m sorry it’s OVER’ letter?  What?_   There is no way in hell his letter could have been taken as a goodbye.  And let off the hook?  Matt’s face contorts into a million different ones as he tries to puzzle through the hurt.  His.  Hers.  She’d not received the love letter, obviously, only the pratty hurt note.  But she’d left _him_.  Why did she think he could ever say goodbye?  That he was…. Sorry?  Why text asking him how was and moments later call him in tears? Something was horribly, horribly wrong. 

He swings open the door and almost runs to the set to find the director.  He needs to switch those three days off and book his flight to L.A.


	4. JUMP

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She looked at him now, full on. Both of them exposed, on the precipice.
> 
> Alex didn’t rush. Let the double meaning of ‘wanting’ wash over her, closing her eyes tight. Lacking, needing, desiring, not enough.
> 
> She opens wet eyes.
> 
> “Oh, Alex: jump.”

Alex was curled up in a ball, sobbing, and it was crazy and unfair and ridiculous.  She’d been hurting earlier but this, this was just utterly wrenching.  Matt being cruel added a horrid intertext to well, just **everything** and so it made her rethink and undo… it was like untying very small, tight knots… and she replayed all the gorgeous, amazing moments, hot fire behind her eyes, and allowed the memories to burn to ash.  She gulped through a sob, inelegant and exposed and so, so so, sad.  They had only been together a single bloody week: Alexandra, you got off lucky – if this is the result of a week together _an amazing, outside of logic and headlong into bliss week_ that man could kill you. _He has_.  Snakegrass and so, so so bad for you. Come ON. Only 7 days.  F _our years.  It was FOUR years and those hands did not lie._ Oh, Matt.

With shaking fingers she found her phone and blocked his number.

 

**

 It wasn’t as easy as Matt had imagined.  So much scheduling magic had already been initiated on his behalf that it was utterly impossible to shift cast and crew to accommodate his mad plan.  It would take at least two days to sort. Maybe it was too impulsive anyway. Maybe she was just crazy.  ‘You gave me hope and then you took it away.  _That’s enough to make anyone dangerous.’_   Oh ASSHOLE, Matt.  Drop being the Doctor.  ‘God no, Alex: sorry,’ he apologized to the wind.  Sorry, love.   _Still yours.  Always.  Still mine?  Oh, yes:_ MINE, his heart growled.

 **

 The following two days are torture but he needs to stay focused.  He gets through his scenes quickly but they lack the extra magic for which he is known. _Needs them to see_  Fuck. And he’s a bit volatile, now bouncing a bit too happily on the balls of his feet, now staring off into the middle distance with more drama than the scene requires.  For the first time he just does not care to work up three possibilities for every interaction and he’s just hoping that everyone feels he’s earned this small break.  It’s just that he’s got too many Alexs in his head: scenarios where she moans into him; scenarios where she slaps him; daydreams where he just waits on her doorstep and knows she is inside, unwilling to open the door;  images of his tongue tracing circles on her neck as he fucks her and makes him scream his name again. Again. _Again. More._  Blindfolds, begging, _love_. He’s distracted and unsure but he’s hopeful now too – there is a chance this can be fixed.  He didn’t know how badly he needed to have her back _love him back_ until he let himself see it was a continuing possibility.  And now the dream of them was a burning thing. Thing is, he can see outcomes but can’t manage to figure out what he says to her.  What words? His flight from Heathrow to LAX is booked but he has no idea what he will find when he arrives.  Where he will go.  He hates flying.  Uncertainty.  Not having her in his bed.  Calls to her ring only once and she never picks up.  Blocked, then. Between takes Matt texts Alex incessantly, just in case:

 

_‘I wrote you a LOVE LETTER not a goodbye letter. Honestly, woman.’_

_‘Alex, love, call me. Please.’_

_‘Give me 5 minutes alone with you and I will fix this’_

_‘Bloody hell if I had a safeword **I** would use it now.  Please, Alex. Please.’_

 

_‘If any of this ever mattered to you, any of it, call me.  It’s a misunderstanding, Alex. I do not know what to say but let me try.’_

_‘I know you. I do. You know me. You do.’_

_‘I love you.’_

 

_‘I love you.’_

_‘I love you.’_

Then, a different tack entirely:

 

_‘Alex, you’re mine.’_

 

… until he realizes that he sounds uncomfortably close to stalking her.  Fuck.  Never without her permission.  But, oh, what her YES does to him.  Oh, her yes.  What she likes.  Oh god what she has got Him to like _need._ Oh, Alex, say yes again. So he writes that, just in case:

 

‘Say yes again. I will give you everything. Everything.’ _You already have it._

_‘Alex please let’s talk. I’m flying to LA on the first flight tomorrow.’_

 

More likely she isn’t reading his texts. Or even receiving them.  He needs to get there.  _His hands on her body_ Part of him wishes, in this moment, that someone else knew about this, all of it. Not just that he needed an emergency flight but the full reason for it.  It was too confusing: this hunger; his need. The way they fit. The way she made him want. New. And old: he has been hers for years.  Years _._ And finally after a sleepless London night he’s at Heathrow with a bag.

 

**

 

Three days before she needs to fly back to London.  She’s not even sure she can manage to be on the same bloody continent with Matt and it’s good that she’s a pretty fantastic actress – she shakes her head at that but wills herself to believe her best reviews – because, honestly, she’s close to ruining her time with Salome with her late night tears and red-rimmed mornings.  ‘My mother was always in a state of heartbreak, it was just a question of degree,’ she imagines Salome telling interviewers later in life.  This is not how it was all supposed to go.  So she makes pancakes and tells stories and they watch television in their pyjamas and she tickles that little girl until they are both truly laughing.  She will get through this.

 

“Mummy?”

 

“hmm?”

 

“Did you bring any gum?”  Ah, gum.  Salome’s special only-sometimes treat – Alex  sometimes chewed it during take-off and it was a small ritual of return – she gave her gum to Salome after her flight.  This time she’d been too distracted on arrival to think of it.

 

“In my bag, sweetheart – it’s still in the hall closet. Not the best breakfast.”  Goodness – she hadn’t even really unpacked and she was heading back _.  Not to him._

 

“Ohh… mommy!” It’s a squeal. 

 

“What”

 

“ _Matt LOVES Alex_ …. Sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g.”  It’s a sing-song pitched in a high  registry between delight and accusal.

 

Alex freezes.  What????  “Not funny, Salome!” She tries to make it sound light but just can’t and Salome rushes forward with a worried face.

 

“Sorry to tease you, mommy.  Truly.  I love Matty, you know I do. It’s just you hadn’t opened it. ”

 

And then the envelope is in Alex’s hands.  Matt loves Alex???

 

“It’s just a joke,” she says brightly but mechanically, “I’ll open it later.” And Alex forces herself to sit on the couch with the letter still in her hand, trying to breathe normally, her thumb running along the paper, willing her heart to slow and listening to it in her ears for a full half hour, the distant show’s laugh track in the background, her daughter the only thing grounding her.

 

It isn’t until Alex is alone in her room, door locked, edge of the bed, that she allows herself to scowl at the letter and run a finger across the writing.  She thinks about just not opening it – and maybe if the possibilities hadn’t burned into her body for the last thirty minutes she might have been able to resist.  But they had. So she opens it, and reads:

 

_Dear Alex,_

_I’m sorry … that talking has been so difficult._ Her eyes skate across the rest of the words. It’s the letter she saw him writing.  But it isn’t. Isn’t at all : _I trust youAlexIloveyouadeclarationDon’tbescaredYourMattxxAlexIloveyouadeclarationDon’tbescaredYourMattxx.  AlexIloveyouAlexIloveyouAlexIloveyouAlexIloveyou_ Her eyes just keep gliding: _lovelyamazing_ _missyousomuchDon’tbescared_ and there is nothing on the page just nothing saying he is breaking up with her. He’s breaking into her. _Oh._ _What have I done?_

“Sal, where is my mobile?” Alex yells into the hall, trying not to let panic and hope creep into her voice.  “I can’t find it anywhere!” Ok, that sounded a bit hysterical.   Damn, she’d been in such a funk she hadn’t _cared_ no one had called.  For days, now that she thought about it.  Had he tried?

 

“I’ll try calling it from the kitchen.”  She can hear her daughter’s feet running. “Must be dead – it’s only ringing once and then hanging up.  What did you do to it?” Salome’s giggling.

 

“I didn’t DO anything to it.  Just misplaced it.  Honestly, Sal.”  Well, that wasn’t quite true.  After blocking Matt’s number – right… she’d pitched the phone.  Thrown it.  Oh. She checked the floor.  There it was, behind the hamper.  She brought it back to her nightstand to charge and reluctantly went downstairs to the only landline and she really didn’t want to call Matt from there, not in front of Sal, but could not stop herself.  10 a.m. her time.  What time was it there?  6 p.m. Cardiff time.  Oh Matt.  Pick up.  _Be alone._

 

Ringing. Customer cannot be reached.  Oh, Fuck.  She needed to talk to him.  _Needed._

 

She tried to pretend nothing had happened – _nothing Has changed. Everything has changed_ – but her step is light, bright, afraid; her energy a bit manic.  She calls again 15 minutes later.  Still not getting through.  _Has he blocked Me?_   “Let’s gets dressed, Sal,” she says, needing to be alone in her room.  Her phone is still charging, but the screen is popping up notifications now.  And oh dear GOD there were messages from him.  Her hands shake.  Screen after screen after screen.   She reads them in his voice, letting herself hear him again.  Ten, twenty, forty messages: longing, fear, contrition, love, caring, need.  A claim. So Matt.  Yes.  She lets herself say yes.

 

The relief that she never did know how to work the stupid block function washes over her.  Thank God.  And, oh… she sat back down on the bed, hit by a tsunami of relief and gratitude and trepidation and desire and she can barely breathe now.  A second chance. He was coming. If he was on the first flight – _was he really?_ \- he’d be in the air.  Right now.  Direct morning flights from Heathrow to LA land just after lunch.  She can barely work her fingers to text:  ‘ _Wait for me. I’m picking you up. Matt - I love you.’_     


**

  
She hustles Salome off to a playdate (‘can I sleep over?” Sal had begged and Alex, who always said no when her days were so limited and felt rare, today said yes and tried not to sound too eager and grateful).  Alex is wearing  a sundress, belted and she’s left her hair long for him. Seeing herself with his eyes. She arrives at LAX and honestly can’t decide is he’s more likely to have flown Virgin or British Airways. Virgin seems hipper, so she tries Terminal 2.  He’s not on the fight. She thinks she has maybe never been so scared. 

Terminal B, then.  Oh God, please.  She hates being at LAX without a hat.  People do look; recognize her.  She doesn’t want to be unkind but she almost runs to deter them.  If she stops she might absolutely crumble.   She’s late for the BA flight – knows that schedule scarily well.  Please wait.  Please, please be there.  


***

Most of the passengers have left.  There he is.  She can’t believe he is still here, really. He has a hat, but people are sure to recognize him the longer he waits.  And yet… here he is: waiting. She  
sees his profile first. He looks furious, tight lipped, body taught, restrained. Not her Matt, then. Oh.  She might have lost him anyway. Then: _you never had him._

 

“Matt?”  But he doesn’t turn right away.  She walks closer and closer and wants to hug him so so badly, but keeps her arms at her sides.  “Oh. You’re angry… Of course you are,” she says, in a smaller voice than she had intended. “Say something.  Matt, look at me.”

 

And then he turns and she sees he’s fighting tears. Tears?

 

“God, Alex, I can’t do this.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“No!” he rushes, grabbing both her upper arms too tightly. “I just don’t know what to do, Alex. Tell me – because I can’t lose you. I can’t. I only just found my way to you. God, woman… You are infuriating.  And, let’s face it, a bit crazy.”

 

He tries a smile, but it’s still a bit forced and watery, with a haunting of bitterness he’s trying to keep at bay, so he rushes forward instead of trying to warm it.

 

“And that you would think I could do that… That we could be like that… Together… And that I would just – fuck, Alex – that I would write you a fucking goodbye note?” Matt’s hands soften against her arms.

 

She forces herself to meet his eyes.

 

“… Seriously… because now that I’ve thought about it that’s probably the most insulting thing anyone has ever thought of me.” As the words leave his mouth he feels his heart harden a bit, the full impact of hurt hitting him, now that he is safely here, holding her.  He lets go of her arms and runs a palm over his head.

 

“Darling…”

 

“Don’t, Alex. It kills me, because it was you thinking it and thinking I could do that to you.”

 

“Matt…”

 

“And this wasn’t some mad fling, Alex, it wasn’t.”

 

_past tense?_

 

“You have no idea, no idea how much I have wanted you.  For how long.  I … I’d only guessed at how it might be, with us, I mean, between us, the sex absolutely… of course I’d fantasized but I had no idea, Alex. Just none.  But I feel like I’ve admired and loved you for just, forever. I tried to make you feel it. It just hurts that I thought I was telling you everything. And you never heard me. “

 

“Matt… stop… I heard you.  I did. It’s just…”

 

“I know, Alex, I do…”

 

“No, you don’t…I trusted you. I did. You must know that.  But when I thought I’d been wrong …. oh God, Matt.  You… I always have a foot out the door and I... I didn’t this time.”

 

“I’ve been utterly ridiculous about you –  I memorize you.  Us.  Your skin. The way we talk.  The way you scream.  Every small fucking sound.  Every. Beautiful. Small. Escaping. Sigh.  Even before all this, Alex, even before, I’d watched everything you have ever been in – multiple times. Compared my last 4 girlfriends to you – found wanting, by the way.”  A small smile played at the corner of his lips, this time genuinely warm.  He was quieter now and slower, and moved toward her to tuck stray curls behind her ear. “Extremely.  Wanting.”

 

She looked at him now, full on.  Both of them exposed, on the precipice.

 

Alex didn’t rush.  Let the double meaning of ‘wanting’  wash over her, closing her eyes tight.  Lacking, needing, desiring, not enough.

 

She opens wet eyes.

 

“Oh, Alex:  jump.”

 

And she just does, fast, her heart flung, literally to his heart, almost knocking him over,  breastbone to breastbone, impossibly close, her arms wrapped tightly around his back, clinging to his sides, willing them longer to wrap entirely around him and back across her but there, she feels it now, HIS arms and he HAS her just as close, as desperate, one of his arms pinning her lower back so she can’t budge from his torso, hip to hip, need to need, the other hand firmly and rhythmically moving up and down her back as he whispers “Alex, oh God baby, I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” close to her ear. And she can’t tell if he’s reassuring himself or her and does not care.

 

It’s a moment of perfect and then, unbidden, something raw erupts and she frees her right arm and makes a tight fist and send it like a hammer into his chest:  “you’d better...” And she was not going to let him see her cry, _to see me ever again_ but she is obviously crying, if silently, her shoulders heaving, and she hits him again, hand still fisted, hard, but slower and now he’s folded his large hand over hers, holding it like a pulsing world. _Shhhh._

“Come on.”  Matt grabs his bag and her hand and drags her to the family bathroom.  And in a second they are inside, door locked, time stopped. 

 

“Alex?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Yes?”

 

And she’s kissing him, beyond want, hands at the back of his neck and, now, down the front of his pants _do you still want me?_ And he does, of course, he does, hand over hers now, rubbing it along his cock. Alive and longing.

 

“I’m so SO sorry, Matt.  I am.  I thought…” and she’s really crying now and Matt  has pushed her into the wall and is kissing her face and holding her by the hair, finally stilling her with a hand on her heart, his lips to her ear: “Do you want this, Alex? Do you want me? Us? Because you can have anything you want. Then, softer: “You always could.”

   
“Always. Yours. If you still want me.”

 

His lips are on her then, his teeth, his knee between her legs, his hands ripping at the dress, buttons on the floor and he is ripping at her bra and tearing it, exposing her and he does not CARE and his mouth is on her nipples and she is moaning into the bathroom and FUCK she just wants him. Wants. _Them._

 

“Fuck… new safeword, Alex.”

 

 “Give me one.”

 

“Justine.”

 

“Got it.” Then: “I will never, ever, use it, Matt”

 

“I hope you never have to love, but take it.”  He’s panting.  He will come just looking at her.  “Did you mean what you said?”  He presses his erection against her cunt and rips the final seams of her dress and she’s open in front of him now, just panties and he says, low, slow and full of need: “Take them off.  Now.”

 

She moves away from his body reluctantly and kicks them off, fast, “Mean what?”

 

“That you really had waited?”

 

God, it seems so forever ago… that time of need before feeling numb and lost and angry and she really doesn’t want to think about it and yelling it into the phone full of lost but he’s asked her to and she tells him:  “Yes, I meant it, of course I did.” Then, smaller:  “You’d wanted me to wait.”

 

“Oh, my good good girl” he hums.  “Come for me, then. Come on.”

  
They’re still now. So still.  His hands aren’t moving on her anymore, his mouth isn’t on her nipples. Nothing.  Just his asking.  What he wants. “Oh, anything, Matt.” And he’s pressed flat against her now and she’s rubbing up and down. Fuck.  She needs more: “Touch me. God, touch me…”

 

“No, Alex.  You’ll come because I want you to. “

 

“Yes.”

 

“Yes, you will.  Come on, now.”

 

Alex closes her eyes and rubs against him, and she doesn’t care how she looks… dirty, greedy… she needs him to know… “Fuck, Matt…” she’s licking along the side of his neck and rubbing against him and she really hasn’t come since the last time they were together, half-planned, and then, mostly in mourning, disinterested, but now she is molten, burning hot along his body.

 

“Tell me to.  Tell me to…”

 

“Alex… come for me... show me…”

 

“Fuck … make me…”

 

“If you can’t come without me touching you, you just won’t come, Alex… But then I will make you.  Come for me and I will make you come, over and over and you will come with me fucking you, and you will come with me in your mouth and with my mouth on you, fuck, Alex, you will come knowing I love you.  This time you will.  I do. God, I do.  I love you. And when you come, you come for me. For me.  Baby, for me, for us. You need to.”

 

“I’ll come with you hitting me.”

 

“Oh yes, you will – but not yet, I’m still too angry yet, and I will never, never NEVER hit you in anger,” he says, beginning fiercely, ending softly.

 

And she feels herself building, then, coming… “you’re angry...”

 

“furious”

 

“me, too…”

 

“Stop talking, Cunt, stop … come.  You need to stop thinking. Start listening.  For me. NOW. Come on. Fuck, baby… I want to see you. Show me, baby, show me what you need, who you ARE.”

 

 Then, crying out, rubbing herself against him, she pulls her hands over her head and feels herself so naked  and she is SCREAMING and crying into him and begging “yes" and "please" and "oh, Fuck Matt,” and, finally, “can I come?”

 

And there has never been anyone more beautiful and begging and when he says ‘no’ he grabs her face and his eyes lock with her eyes. And she almost sobs, but his fingers are opening her and now she feels his cock at her entrance -  “please, fuck, please” - and now he’s inside her, grabbing at her thigh and she hikes it up and is beyond crying and words and caring what she looks like or how vulnerable she feels now, in front of him. And now he is inside her. Hard. It’s really happening.  It will always be this way.  Perfect. “Come, now. Right now. I’m not waiting.” And she does, crying into his shoulder sobbing a thank you. And an I love you and a god I have missed you.


	5. I could get used to this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She didn’t ask for permission to come this time. She just came. Screaming her heart, and hearing the words echoed, comingled. And then they slept. And not everything was perfect, not yet. But some things were. This was.

When they part they both look down at almost the same time -- to the tiles, to Matt’s jacket in a puddle on the floor, to Alex’s scattered buttons.  Matt finds Alex’s eyes and breaks into a slow, grateful smile and a flame leaps in his chest, possessive and churning and important. He thinks she looks mostly held together by her belt: dress torn, bra hanging open, clasp broken.  She puts a hand to that clasp, then, and has to bite her lip to stop from smiling just too, too, much while she steadies her breath. 

 “Ravishing,” Matt finally offers.

 “Ravished,” Alex amends.

 “Sorry about the dress, love, I, umm…”

 “Don’t,” she says softly and too sharply, she thinks, but she can’t have him backtrack on even a single second of what just happened. She brings her hands to his face, cradling it gently, like an impossible object _how is it possible I am touching him again?:_ “Sorry… what I mean is… just… it was kind of perfect.”

 “Yeah,” he agrees, bringing his hands to her waist. “We’d better get out of here before I decide we should just stay in this washroom all night.” He bops her nose, like old times _like tomorrow_.  

 ‘You’d better have a shirt in there I can wear,” Alex laughs shakily, still adjusting to this new world where there is a them, but she’s already unzipping and rummaging through his bag with intimate, familiar fingers. They leave the washroom five minutes apart, Alex first since she needs to get the car.  And when she slides into the driver’s side, Matt’s light blue jacket over her ripped clothes she hugs herself tightly, his jacket a comfort, a metaphor, a promise. Underneath it _him_ she is still undone. Maybe forever undone.  Her hands are still shaking and her heart is still screaming yes.

*

The drive back to Alex’s is almost silent.  They are holding hands, sending small squeezes back and forth so hot and promising and occasionally rhythmic it’s like they are still fucking.

“Darling, are you hungry?” Alex ventures. Matt raises his eyebrows suggestively before nodding no.  It’s early afternoon, but later for Matt, and between the long flight, the worry, the sleeplessness and the intensity of their reunion, _along multiple dimensions_ , he suddenly feels so, so tired.

“Um… Alex… “

“Yes?”

“I haven’t booked a hotel.”

“Thank god for that, beautiful idiot,” she says smiling, but shy. “I said I was coming to get you. Aren’t you coming to mine?” Her hand now impossibly still in his.

“Of course I am, if you’ll let me.” _Shit._ He’s watching her in profile, the small movements of her lips as she breathes…She is such a study in abandon there in his blue coat, he thinks, that crazy hair sculpted into chaos by his own grasping hands, her cheeks still warm and excited, that it almost physically hurts him being this close.   _Still hurting._

“Honestly.” She removes her hand and properly swats him.  “Right, then – mine, shower, early night.” _you can make up for it_ She knows that flight and her voice is all business and Kingston competence but it just sounds a bit wrong so she adds, smiling, eyes leaving the road for just a second to slide down his body and back again to his mouth: “there _will_ be kissing.”

“I am counting on it, Ms. Kingston,” Matt smiles slyly, hiding a yawn behind his free hand that also masks a shadow of nagging fear.  “And Salome?”

“Not home until tomorrow noon.”

*

When they reach her home, Matt is torn, his hands unsure even as he wants to throw Alex over his shoulder, carrying her giggling-screaming across the threshold. _His._ Instead he does nothing of the sort, opting to grip his bag tightly and wait for her lead.  It’s always an other-worldly zone with Alex, he thinks. Between here and there. Waiting.

Alex blinks hard.  She doesn’t really deserve this, this lovely man, so green and full of possibility …  this man who knows what he is getting.  His talented heart. He knows. _How?_  And he wants.   _How?_ Still.  And she believes him and laces her fingers through his and pulls him into the house.  Reckless:  Home.

*

Showered and slid under covers it’s as still as that very first morning.  They’re in bed snaked around each other, face to face, lips so close that when they breathe they are breathing in each other’s air. 

“More,” says Alex.

“This place where your neck curves, obviously…”

“What else?”

“Your lips. Maybe especially this bottom one.”

“Really, why?”

Because you chew it when you’re thinking and it is adorable, and when I lick it it’s like open sesame and you always open your mouth.”

“Really?”

“True.”

“and?”

“are you going to make me do an inventory of your _entire_ body, Ms. Kingston?”

“maybe. …

“Ok, then, let’s go global - You’re the sexiest woman I have EVER met or imagined. From your earlobes …”

He pauses to suck a soft earlobe tip into his mouth.

“To your toes…”  - Matt wriggles his own against them - “With a special mention for your hair…  He’s moving his whole body against her now, fingers roaming,  punctuating his words with small licks that somehow seem exquisitely filthy.

“ … And your eyes…

                  …. And your dirtiness…

…Oh, and  - God, your _tits_!  Shit. I should maybe start all over again and start there.  You know I’d seen them and was in love with them before I even met you?”

“Oh, shut _up._ ”

“And your openness.”  Matt brings his head down to her right breast and runs a reverent small, wet, circle around her nipple before taking it into his mouth and gently tugging, eliciting a moan in a high, needful register “Oh _God_ , Matt.”  Yesterday morning she had been so lost and now, somehow, he is here. _How can this be real?_

He pulls himself level to her again and just stares and he’s never had the nerve to talk to her with this inflection of awe in his voice before, but he wants to. _Needs to._ Why not? This is also who he is. A different gamble, then, and it’s not so much the words themselves, but their naked tone, and his eyes, deep, open and shamelessly adoring: “And your heart. And your talent. And your experience. And all your wicked ways.”

He grabs at the softer flesh by her hip, first one hand, then two and she makes to twist away, “Matt…”

“Don’t. you. dare.  I mean it, Alex… there is nothing about you I don’t want.  No hiding from me.” The last bit comes out entirely the wrong way, _or did it?_ a harsh demand he doesn’t think he wants to make and he instantly softens his voice: “Christ, do you not think I know what you LOOK like at this point?  What you feel like?  That I haven’t found out yet that you’re not 30?  I’m not interested in any kind of airbrushed version of you.  You know it.”

Alex chews her lip thoughtfully and forces her body to relax back into his touch: “I do.”

“I like the sound of that,” Matt laughs easily.

“How did you get to be the reasonable one? I have the wrinkles, I should be the grown up.”

“I’m plenty grown up. Besides, how I got a woman like you given what _I_ look like…” _do I HAVE you?_

She rocks gently against him.  “You, my love, can only be explained through alchemy.” She looks at him with curiosity and wonder and proceeds cautiously. “You are incredibly handsome…”

“But?”

“No buts… everything about you is striking, it’s just that… with you it’s the combination… unusual… together it’s combustible… ”  He doesn’t look convinced.  She falters, then, and by way of recovery offers something else instead: “And speaking of experience… shit, Matt…” she can’t find the right words so kisses him instead and then, inanely and utterly genuine manages a “wow.” _Wow?_

He smiles, stupidly pleased.  Then smiles again realizing that this talking and smiling _ordinary_ feels so good.   “Yeah?”

“Ohhhhh, yeah.  You know it’s like I saved up all the sex I didn’t have in the last two years just for you?”

Matt laughs.  “I HAD wondered you know.  Though a gentleman would never ask.  But honestly, Ms. Kingston, you are insatiable.”

She swats him: “Only for you.  Only for you.”   _Only for this. Us._

She places her palm flat against his back and pulls him closer, chest to chest…

“So where are we, then?”  She asks in a River voice. 

“Same page, same timeline, love,” and he rocks his hips in invitation.

“So what now?”

“Now?” He pauses.  What, exactly? Then something clicks into place: an alignment of cock and heart and spirit and want and gift. Oh, he knows.  He _knows._   When he speaks it’s low and slow:  “What now? Now I’m going to fuck you, Alex, and tell you I love you. And you _will_ hear me.”

Her breath catches, but she can’t talk. It’s like he’s already fucking her with his voice and all she can do is open her legs. _Her heart._  And Matt rolls on top and slides two fingers into her, exploring slowly, and she almost comes right then, her cunt full of fingers and I love you, before Matt brings his hand back to his cock, lines himself up and presses slowly into her.

She curls her legs around him, left leg above his ass, right leg below and pulls him closer: “Yes.” _Yes this yes more yes I believe you_

And then his voice... FUCK his voice again.  No breathlessness or wonder, instead a deep, basic, factual thing:  “I love you.”

He thrusts, his eyes catching her eyes and Alex has to close hers… It’s too much, he’s too much, this second is maybe too much.

“Alex …. Can you feel how much?” _too much._  Then something breaks and she arches. And opens.

He didn’t tell her what to do or what to say or that she had to come screaming his name, not like the other times.   But like the other times what he wanted was what she wanted, too.

_Bloody hell, Matt Smith._ Her hips rock into his, still gentle and she forces her eyes open, too, drawing his face down toward hers with a hungry hand… Close enough so that they can share breath again, and words again and she whispers into that shared space with urgency and need, laced _jesus, FUCK_ with tears:

“I love you…”

                       “I love you…”

“I love you…”

            “I love you…”

Their words like a train speeding away from the station, rhythmic, accelerating, blurring:

“I love you

   I love you I LOVE YOU ILOVEYOUILOVEYOU.”

They were moaning over and into each other and she didn’t know if it was relief or bliss or something else but she cried again like that first night, and for the miracle that he answered back.  He answered.

She didn’t ask for permission to come this time.  She just came. Screaming her heart, and hearing the words echoed, comingled.  And then they slept.  And not everything was perfect, not yet.  But some things were.  This was.

*

Alex wakes up and it’s still dark – 2 a.m…. Bloody hell - how is _she_ on UK time? -- and tries to close her eyes again but it’s futile, so she opts instead to look at Matt. Definitely worth it. If only she hadn’t jumped to conclusions with that stupid note. But that was who she was. And part of her was relieved that hurdle was over:  does he or doesn’t he, really?  He does. There was still a lot to figure out but she could work with that. And she hugs herself and slips out of bed and into her green, silk, robe and, barefoot and brushing fingers through tangled curls goes down to make breakfast.

By the time the kettle whistles she hears him on the stairs – _on her stairs!_ – padding softly, wearing green and white striped pyjama bottoms and ruffling his hair like a small boy – at least that’s what she think until he looks up at her with a gaze that almost pins her to the cabinet.

“Morning,” he mumbles softly.

“Good morning.” Eyes shy.  “Tea and scrambled eggs?” She turns toward the stove.

“Please.” And he’s instantly behind her, lifting her hair and planting a kiss to her nape.  “We’re good?”

“Perfect.  I hope.”

“Oh, Alex, love... I could get used to this.  You?”

“Yesss.”

And then he stops, suddenly serious, turns her and looks her in the eye.  And reaches past her to turn off the stove.  Alex braces. “You know, you fucking gave me whiplash.  My brain wanted so hard to think I could be so easily over you. _Pretend_ I felt….”

“Don’t...”

“No...  let me.  Oh… fuck it, Alex, maybe it doesn’t matter was I felt then… except the moment I thought that maybe it wasn’t true, that maybe it wasn’t over after all, I snapped back so hard, deeper … what are we doing, Alex?” _what are You doing?_

Alex looks at him her face soft and concerned and regretful. It will lead to the conversation they keep never having.  He deserves this.  So her words just spill, fast and fearful and tripping:  “I saw you writing that day and misunderstood.  It almost killed me writing that goodbye note to you… letting you go. Us. I’m a cynical shit sometimes.  It was a pre-emptive strike.  And so, so foolish. I do know that.   And I do know you.  I think I do, anyway.  Things that matter. I know how you make me feel.  What you make me want.  Need. And, Matt I want to love you.  And I do and God… I hope I’m not having a breakdown or something… I felt just so shattered … that after what we’d done …”

He pulls her into a soft hug and she tucks her face into his neck. “…that you were sorry about it.  Like maybe I’d forced you into it.”

Matt pulls back to look at her, raising a protesting eyebrow, but she looks scared and his heart twists, and he’s also scared, then.  This is what it means to love her… she’s showing him. “Hey, hey….” Matt runs an open palm across her cheek. _Getting a goodbye note from you shattered me, too_ he doesn’t say, because she’s still talking.

“…and you also put me back together.  When we’re together.  I don’t know what I’m doing.  I want you. And you don’t have to be in charge all the time... that’s too much… but … I like it _."_ She pauses. _"Really_ like it.” And she looks up at him, then, with daring, gorgeous, open, hopeful eyes.

There.  There it is. Ok, then. His answer.  “Shh….” He’s pulled her close again with no intention of letting her go. “I know you do. If you didn’t I would _never_ …”  And he lets out a breath.  The familiar ‘I’ve got this feeling’ he gets with her is back.  The familiar _click._   He smiles … his body charged in a way that it had never been before meeting her but that is now becoming familiar - an achy, pounding, racy feeling that can only be satisfied by the feel of her skin. He anchors his hips to her form.

“Oh GOD yes, Alex.”

“Yes?”

“I like it, too.  Really." He kisses her forehead, soft and smiling: “Really…” and drops a kiss to her nose... “really…” and finally reaches her lips. “I think I’m getting pretty good at it, too.”

“Yes… yes, you are.”

“I’m a quick study.”

“Maybe a bit of a prodigy.”

“Do you want breakfast, Alex?” he asks in a voice that suggests the answer is no.

She can feel his erection and brings her hand around to stroke his ass through the thin cotton pyjamas: “I want what you want.” She takes a deep breath in anticipation.  

Matt brings his hand to her cunt and cups it firmly. The power across and between them ripples like a living thing: “I want you to remember who owns you.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this is so short - and after such a long wait! And to end before the real kink begins! Damn. The next bit is almost entirely written... I've just been having a hard time making some final decisions, but my indecision about the sex.... and, possibly, the kitchen utensils (spoilers) .... has been holding things up for almost two weeks. And I realized ending it here could work. I hope it does. I won't make you wait long. Promise. (Besides: Alex couldn't stand it ;-) Thank you very much for reading.


	6. You are a poem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was no hint of anger in Matt, just a deep understanding of how to play and tame her body and her racing mind and a deft alignment of his need with hers and Alex ACHED from the miracle that he knew how to fuck her. Knew. _Fuck everything out of me but us._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for Courtney.

“I do.”

  
“Who?” he whispers. He could listen to her say I do over and over and over. He will. _I do._ The voice in his head is his own: _I do, Alex._

  
“You.” She can barely speak, her body already feeling liquid-electric, opening itself to fear and bliss. She wants him like air.

  
“Alex. When I ask you something directly I need to hear your answer.” Matt squeezes gently, his hand still between her legs, and it’s like there’s a direct link between that hot hand and his cock because it’s pulsing and he’s squeezing as much in response to his own body as hers.

  
She clears her throat and locks eyes directly and makes herself more naked for him: “You do.”

  
“I what?”

  
“You … own me. I’m _…_ yours.”Then, softer:“Thank you.” _How are you doing this to me, Matt?_

 _  
Shit, she is just unbelievably delicious_. “Again. Tell me who.”

  
“You do.”

  
“And you want me to?”

  
“Yes.”

  
“You need me to?”

  
“Yes.”

  
“Good… Remember.”

  
Matt can’t help himself in that second. She’s really… really… saying that. _his_. She’s also still Alex Kingston. His mind flies _shit_ between being in her thrall _so much time yeaning for you, love_ and just. Stopping. To. Drink. Her submission. And before he knows what he’s doing his hand is in her hair, reverent and he’s pulling her close and kissing her gently on the cheek, his other hand on her ribs, and he knows it’s ridiculous, but he feels a bit like he’s the one making her breathe. In out, in out, quickening. _ready_

  
“Ready, love?” It’s his regular voice. Checking in. He grabs her eyes and feels a jolt when she nods and places her hand in his and has to resist the urge to bounce up and down a bit of the balls of his feet, and smile too widely, still fuelled a bit by exhaustion, jet-lag, adrenaline and relief. Wound. Wanting.

  
Instead Matt schools his features and reaches behind to the container near the stove and, not even moving his gaze from hers, grabs the closest implement – a wooden spoon – as the rest of them and the container crash to the floor but neither Alex nor Matt looks to the noise. _Breathe_. That will do nicely. Alex sees the spoon and the heady excitement in his eyes _for me_ and reflexively licks her lips. Spoon… that’s ok… interesting, she thinks… _bruises in the shape of my kitchen spoon_ … and smiles an odd smile, happy but laced with incredulity and a potent dose of uncertainty _how-did-this-get-to-be-my-life?_ What surprises her though, is him turning her so he can grab her from behind, his left hand over her right breast now, his right undoing the tie at her waist then pulling her hard to him, her back to his chest, both facing the window where she watches their reflections – the sky outside still dark and their mirror selves ethereal. And hot: portrait of promise.

  
“Open your legs, Alex.”

  
She complies obediently – _why can I not even pretend to play hard-to-get anymore_? _Would he like that?_ spreading more widely and waiting. To her surprise, Matt lands four sharp whacks in succession on her cunt. One right on her clit, one achingly between her legs, and she has no time to think and can’t even decide if she likes it or doesn’t like it … but her body wriggles against him seeking harbor and moves just out of the way enough that the next blow lands on the inside of her thigh as she lets out a small cry and Matt holds her more firmly then and, finally, issues a low “stop it, Alex” in that _voice_. And she stops. And braces.

  
He lets go of her breast then, fanning a hand at the small of her back and comes to face her again; gives her a sweet, delicious kiss, breaking it before she can find his tongue, and brings the spoon up just rubbing it softly, offering two tiny testing feather-light taps, finding his mark before taking a step back and then - thwack !!– right on her clit. Thwack!!! – right at her aching opening. Again. And again.

  
She bites her lip to avoid crying out and grabs the counter behind her and her eyes blink tears and she purposefully spreads her legs wider in invitation and Matt has to palm himself through his pyjama bottoms then and almost comes right there seeing her do it.

  
“Oh yes, love, you know what you need. Show me you know.” Alex nods but doesn’t speak. And he whispers again, much more softly: “show me,” his voice still carrying a whisper of command, even as he rushes close to press a soft lip to her cheek; to taste the salt of a single tear now making its way down Alex’s face and whispers ‘are you ok?’ into her hair, giving her tacit permission to bring her hands to his body where she now runs circles across his shoulders before letting go to shrug off her robe and look to him with wet, wise eyes. She wants to reach for his erection. She holds still. He’s directing, not her, and that’s how she wants it.

  
“Yes, good… I’m good…” Alex manages, feeling a bit unnerved. God, how she wants him; wants this back. And even if all the recent hurt probably wasn’t entirely gone, Matt’s anger surely was – she believed him. Fuck. Trusted in him and in the way he was touching her now and there was no hint of anger in Matt, just a deep understanding of how to play and tame her body and her racing mind and a deft alignment of his need with hers and she ACHED from the miracle that he knew how to fuck her. Knew. _Fuck everything out of me but us._ She smiles then, entirely out of context with this kitchen moment and kisses him full on, throwing her arms around him in a moment of mad surprise, throwing Matt off-balance and smiling so wide she was almost kissing past his mouth.

  
“Hey… hey.. What’s that for?” Matt finally manages, pulling back just a bit to look at her – bright eyed and still a bit teary, but different. He kisses her soundly, wet and greedy and still questioning, finally pacing her back to something slower, but he thinks he can feel her still crying and whispers a second low, loving “sure you’re okay?” against her wet cheek.

  
“Positive.” She was still blinking back tears and an odd kind of shock from something like recognition: this is how they fit. She cocked her head to the side appraisingly, sweeping over Matt’s angular features like he was still the beautiful young almost-stranger, inexperienced and sweet, but was at once pulled into an undertow of MINE as she stared, Matt’s face like a cubist painting all blur and multiplicity and past and present and naïve and worldly and _next_ and, well, just more than a face: hers. Them. Us.

  
Alex upped the ante and took his hand as she moved to bring them both to the floor and now her hands were in his hair – _fuck, this boy’s hair_ – and she kissed his mouth hard and didn’t mind that he saw her eyes still wet and probably still surprised, _he loves me_ , and she pulled him on top of her and inched her back along the cold tiles of her kitchen floor and, again, opened her legs.

  
 _Holy shit she IS Moll Flanders_ Matt thinks, and he feels deep inside the thrill of her obedience, her wantonness as Alex leans back and spreads her legs for him and says simply: “more.” She’s not begging, just stating the obvious.

  
 _What am I asking?_ But Alex can’t even answer herself, something electric happening in her body as she peels back layers of convention and coquettery... she doesn’t even care anymore if she looks beautiful like this, has no idea anymore about what his eyes see _and it had seemed so important_ , only the burning in her, fed by giving in… whatever he wants she just wants _more_ of, and it’s like a million burdens slip away an she spreads her legs impossibly wider and brings a twisting finger to her nipple and now hits the begging wall moaning ‘please’ and as it happens she _does_ look heart-thuddingly gorgeous, curls fanning gently-writhing shoulders, her whole body held open by need, no restraints necessary, the trace of tear-tracks but eyes still shining, her mouth opening and closing into the air like a suckling thing and Matt holds himself over her, their bodies barely making contact, but licks the outline of her lips with a pointed tongue until the point of her own tongue finds him, before she closes her mouth around that tongue and sucks.

  
And – oh, holy FUCK - he will give her more, give her anything… _oh, Alex_ …

  
And he finds the spoon again and holds it a second against her cunt before raising his right arm and bringing it down hard, harder than before, twice, three times, and she makes that SOUND – “keep making that noise baby, god I love to hear you” and it’s a kinda keening, kinda panting sound, like no sound any girl he’s ever been with has even made and he just can’t stand it anymore and turns the spoon in his hand the handle now facing Alex and he dips it into her cunt, slowly circling and pushing in… still slowly… _yes_ … he hears her cry out and he bends his head at the same time and brings his lips to her clit and sucks so, so gently, _is she bruised? Is she hurt?_ and his tongue swirls a small circle full of his heart until he hears her breath change and he fucks her then, gently, with the handle of the spoon, so knowing it’s not enough and knowing, too, with a deep certainty, that he has never been with anyone more incredible and that she is worth this risk. It’s almost painful to withdraw from her and toss the spoon and not immediately sink into her, his cock so hard and needing. But he wants so much more. He brings his head level with hers again, his own shoulder cold on the tiles, and pulls her against him for a desperate hug, desperate even though his fingers are just ghosting, chest-to-chest, knee-to-knee, one hand under her hip, pinned and grateful for her weight, _proof_ the other hand grasping her hair as he realizes just how fast he’s breathing, and he talks gently into her ear, then, his voice hoarse and catching:

 

“You know I love you?”

   
“Yes.”

   
“And you trust me?”

   
“Always. Yes.”

He checks the window. Still dark; still not daybreak. Has an urge to move them from the kitchen back into the bedroom – just in case… damn California picture windows.

  
Matt brings his lips gratefully to Alex’s temple, risking a glance at her profile, so gorgeous, that tiny bump, her perfect lips, chest rising and falling with aching breaths… and rests just a second, gathering his courage and his heart and his need until he can manage to move forward:

  
“Upstairs, then, love. Go get my belt.”

  
He sees only the tiniest hesitation as she releases him and rises first to her knees before standing.

  
“There you go.”

  
She goes up the stairs, naked, deceptively unmarked on the places he’s used to claiming, and it feels so new today, exploring ever more secret places, and he scrambles behind her and lets out a gentle, appreciative whistle. _How the fuck does her ass still look like that?_ When she looks back, halfway up the stairs, he returns her smile and almost scrambles out of his pyjamas so he can bound after her, both naked, until he reflects that it might be better for him to keep his clothes on for a bit this time _she’ll like the contrast._

  
“Upstairs.”

  
His eyes follow her up the stairs, sweeping from ass to curls, those glorious strawberry blond curls… even disheveled from sleep, stylist or no stylist, Alex Kingston’s hair made him mad. He watches her round the corner to the landing before heading to the stairs himself.

  
Oh, he is ready for this. He loves her. _I love her_. She loves him _him_ and holy fuck he thought he would never have this again. And he was going to have it and keep it and build more of it and enjoy the thrill of every second … _oh, Alex_.

  
Matt stands on the threshold of her bedroom, only vaguely registering her bed, her lamps, her dresser, but thrilling, even so, to the feel of her private space as he watches her kneeling down on the floor now, hands grasping the jeans he’d left in a heap last night at the foot of the bed, her ass touching the back of her heels as she pulls the belt ( _tentatively?)_ from his loops, and he hasn’t really been thinking clearly about the mechanics of this until right this second but _fuck_ he is relieved to see a plain leather belt in her hands – good for easy airport security removal -- and not some hipster belt with rivets…

*

  
His hands rummage through the drawer looking for scarves, toying with a couple of ideas… mostly the desirability of tying her face down versus tying her face up _both are perfect_. Something makes him feel he has to consolidate this again, soon… that he might even lose his nerve, a small knot of worry after last night’s soft and admittedly amazing coupling. Would they be able to have both? _Does knowing we love each other change this part of things?_ So far, no… but still… And at root a nagging anxiety: her leaving has damaged his confidence, his trust in her that she want this…. like _this_.

  
He wants her cunt _and_ her heart. He wants to fuck her every way he could ever imagine and let her lead him into imagining things he’d never thought possible. He wants her inside of him, breaking out… breaking apart under him, over him …wants to break into her, melting her ribs with a hot, questing tongue and his own burning heart to get at hers and keep it, twining their beats.

  
There is an odd thing, he reflects: since he’d become famous, whatever that was, it was quite possible that he would never be able to be just himself again, or find the person he could be just himself with. And it wasn’t like Alex Kingston was just a category or something _I will never, ever, instrumentalize you love_ but she was definitely one of the few people in the world who understood the difference between the job and the person and who, let’s face it, admired what he did and also who he was. He smiles to himself…. Oh, all the parts he could play with her. He wasn’t kidding that he felt a bit like a prodigy. You know sometimes when you nail an audition? Nail a particularly difficult speech and the set goes quiet? He’d felt that way so often with the Doctor – his first audition, that speech at the pandorica - and he was nailing being in bed with Alex Kingston. It’s just true. He smiles again at that, then imagines Alex mindreading. Shit… _not like being with you is a job, Alex_. It was more like this: of a handful of people in the whole world you trust one just happens to be an insanely a talented goddess. Also a sex goddess. And she is actually in love with you… a combination of the craziest performance anxiety and the best ovation: _and Ms. Kingston – you take direction so well_. Almost as if he’d spoken aloud she turns and gives him such a questioning, interested slightly scared, _get-on-with-it_ look that he almost wants to blurt out his entire master plan which is really only under development at this very second. His improv skills are strong, though, and, shit, somehow with Alex he just _knows_. They create every second together… her energy is intoxicating, built for sex; binding.

  
He returns his focus to her dresser and determinedly continues to search through the top of her drawer. His hands curl around a gorgeous long _perfect_ paisley scarf _oh good one, you hippy dippy girl_ before he connects with something hard underneath it and – oh, too perfect … He doesn’t know if it is actually a rabbit – it doesn’t look anything like an actual rabbit - but it is certainly a vibrator. Purple. Oh this will be perfect. _So perfect._ He leaves the paisley scarf in the drawer – he won’t need her hands tied: they will be busy.

  
“Over here, Love.”

  
He was still making it up in the moment. Only not. Not really. Because one of his persistent fantasies ever since that first night they’d been together had been this, so her turns to face her:

  
“This is what’s going to happen sweetheart: you’re going to make yourself come while I hit you. And I’m going to come hitting you. Understood?”

  
Her cunt opened, a hungry mouth.

  
He tries to turn on the vibrator, but somehow just can’t figure out or even see where the on-off button could be. Shit. Rocket science vibrator: “Show me.” He works to make his voice sound more like ‘show me how you come with this’ rather than ‘show me where the fucking button is’ but, yeah…

  
And again - he SO loved this about her – there was no real hesitation: she turns it on - secret buttons noted - and leans back against the bed, facing him, connecting her hips to its edge. And then begins teasing herself… first her outer lips, then up to her clit, then nudging the opening of her cunt.

  
“No. No, No, sweetheart – nothing inside you… only me, when you’re very good.”

  
Alex lets out a small mewl, a tiny strangled cry. _Holy fuck yes …_

  
“On your clit baby. And I want you to come over and over again.”

  
“Yes,” she breathes.

  
“While I’m hitting you.”

  
<beat>

  
“Please” she asks, more breathily, her voice high and panting _thank god he’s going to._

  
Matt steps in, his fingers on her waist, giving her a kiss to the temple: “I’ve got this.” The voice is pure Matt and pure happiness, coupled with commanding lust: “you ready?”

  
Alex hands him the belt and he doubles it and holds it tightly in his right hand and her eyes catch his eyes and she bites her lip and smiles in recognition: _he’s back._

  
“Alex, wanna see you come for me now.” The vibrator is still on her clit and her hips rock meaningfully. Matt steps out of his pyjamas and stands naked and aching and ready and lovely in front of her.

  
She gives an imperceptible nod, before risking her free hand out to palm his cock, and it’s so hard, almost pulsing under her fingers, as she runs an electric scratch along Matt’s length and then grabs him firmly and, really, she can’t believe he doesn’t come right there in her hand _definitely no boy with this self-control._ Facing each other, both on the edge.  
  
  
She makes his whole body instantly warm and achy and pulsing and so wanting more. Part of him just wants to let her – just let her give him a handjob right this second or sink her to her knees and grab her by the hair calling for her hot mouth: it feels SO good, it feels so right being back with her and, God, here in her bedroom… here … his hand tightens around his belt – _fuck, she’s going to let me her hit her with my belt_ …

  
Fuck. He can feel himself beginning to jerk his hips into her hand but this is not what he wants. No.

  
“Shhh, baby … stop. ’Cause the only thing I want more than to see you come while I’m hitting you is to come while I hit you.”

  
“Want you to…”

  
“Need to…”

  
“Please.”

  
“Dresser. Face the mirror. I want to see your face. And I want you to see me.”

  
“Watch me.”

  
“Oh, I will, love. No secrets. I will make you see yourself outside of secrets.” _Shit. When did he become such a fucking poet?_

  
“May I?” It takes a second for Matt to register she’d rather not walk holding the rabbit against her – fair enough.

  
“Go on, love. Hurry.”

  
She walks the few steps to the dresser, face to the mirror, gripping its edge with her left hand before bringing her right hand with the rabbit back into delicious contact with her clit again. It’s a bit bruised and swollen, maybe, she thinks, and hurts and pulses deliciously and her familiar vibrator feels so different here, like it’s part of Matt.

  
He begins gently, doubled belt in his hands almost nudging her hips into contact with the dresser, a bit hypnotic as he watches the scene framed in the mirror, Alex’s eyes half closed, the rhythmic whir of the rabbit going in and out of focus for him as she circles across her skin:

  
“Keep it on your clit, now.”

  
She takes in the reflection, Matt so hot behind her, arm raised high now, concentrating, aiming… He is beautiful, like an athlete is beautiful; like hope is beautiful.

  
His belt comes down hard this time and she wants to count, or something, to keep from just falling to the floor. But he hasn’t asked. She feels weightless.

  
It’s the Matt she loves. It’s the same Matt who showered her with I love yous and covered her with bruises, who cried in her arms and who was now blowing a hot breath to push the fringe from his face so he can better see her to hit her.

  
The vibrator is right up against her clit. God, she could come right away but she isn’t sure she should come yet and she manages a “Matt?” in a strangled voice.

  
“Alexxxx…. “ He answers, low and sing-song and pleased. You can come as many times as you want while I’m hitting you. From now on you can always come when I’m hitting you, I will always say yes, and when you ask me to put you over my knee, when you ask me to hit you I want you to know that you’re also asking for permission to come. I will always let you  
come like this, sweetheart.”

  
He hits her again with new-found force, connecting with a loud snap, and she cries out.

  
God, Matt and his crazy promises. The idea. Ah… she didn’t want to come yet though. She’d wait for him.

  
“You come for me now: understood? You are free to come but _not_ to hold back.” _Mindreader. Hell._ “Right now.”And just like that she screams and falls apart.

  
“Good girl. You’re learning.” _Holy SHIT_. And she presses the vibrator harder to her clit to force more aftershocks and moans in the direction of the mirror, registering the rise and fall of the belt, and Matt’s other hand on his cock, slow and pacing, his look of utter concentration and devotion. And he is young. There is no mistaking it. So young and lithe. And so utterly, impossibly, knowing.

  
And, again, as if reading her thoughts: “I don’t want this to be over too soon, Alex. I want you to know how much I need this, how much I missed you. Do you like this, Alex?”

  
Thwack!

  
“Yes. You know I do.”

  
She liked this. She liked knowing that he trusted her enough to trust her with this again. That he trusted himself enough to bring her to tears but never to hurt her. She felt that familiar together-with-Matt-crumbling feeling. _Virtuoso_.

  
She looked back. He was pumping faster. The blows weren’t hard but they were excruciating repetitive now.

  
As if he could hear what she was thinking he switched it up: fronthand, backhand, hitting up to down on the right side of her cheek. Hard from the left now.

  
He caught her eye in the mirror and panted:

  
“So beautiful, Alex. God I want you like this.”

  
She spread her legs wider and answered with a high-pitched panting of her own.

 _  
Oh, keep panting like that_ “I missed that sound. Keep making that sound.”

  
She kept making that sound he liked – huhuuhuhuhuhuhuhuhu – it was fast, shallow, panting that switched from higher to lower register without rhythm, growing louder and more needful and kinda otherworldly and not a sex sound that she ever heard herself make but Matt seemed to draw out all of that in her and more and suddenly it was combined with a ragged sobbing.

  
“Tell me why you need this, baby.” _Breathe…_

  
“… make me WANT so much…. And I shouldn’t run from you.”

  
“No, no you shouldn’t. You don’t run from me. You just come for me… so dirty, Alex, so fucking perfect. Look at yourself. Look.”

  
Alex forces her eyes into focus and the reflection is hot and shocking and the rabbit pulses too intensely on her clit for her to hold out much longer and she moans obscenely as Matt brings his arm down harder _finally_ and the look in his eye shifts a bit and she knows he is holding his cock in his other hand, probably pumping and she moans and braces herself on the dresser with both hands against the incipient blows to come and searches for him in the mirror as the rabbit hits the floor and tears run down her cheeks in earnest.

  
“Fuck – Alex - that’s not what I asked you to do …” Matt’s voice is dangerously low “… can you not hold a vibrator to your fucking clit and make yourself come? Is that too hard?” He punctuates the question with the belt and she moans a ‘sorry.’

   
Alex retrieves and brings the vibrator back quickly and places it exactly where she knows it will be hardest to resist, where he wanted it the first time. _sorry_

  
Then, his voice soft and matter-of-fact and impossibly lower as he lands a stinging blow across her ass:

  
“Alex, do I need to find someone who can hold that for you?”

   
Another blow.

   
“So you can have both hands free? You need someone to hold that fucking vibrator to your clit and watch you? Watch you letting me do this to you while I make you say thank you?”

 

“Fuck, Matt…. please…. God….”

   
That’s all it takes – she doesn’t move her hand anymore, but she’s screaming and coming again _again? What the hell?_ and he takes the belt in his left hand and pumps his cock furiously with his right, raining weaker blows back and forth across her ass and he comes watching her face in the mirror as his left hand lands a hard blow across the top of her thighs and she rises on the balls of her feet with the intensity of keeping the rabbit so close, her cunt still clenching, clit pulsing, before checking behind her to make sure he’ll let her move it and he’s right behind her now, she registers his closeness before he reaches her,coming over her back with a moan….Almost collapsing on top of her, cupping both her breast with his hands, resting his forehead against her spine. He can barely make words.

  
“Come one more time, one more time for me...”

  
“Can’t,” she breathes. Then corrects herself: “sorry.”

  
She brings the rabbit to the side of her cunt where the vibrations are new, settling to the left of her clit and feels her tiring desire begin to race again.

  
“Just talk to me, Matt,” she whimpers.

 

“After you come there’s just one more thing we need, one more thing: something I need…”

 

“Anything.”

 

“You need to be punished..”

  
  
“Matt?” _Shit…_

 

She came suddenly, she came so hard, she came screaming, she came seeing herself in the mirror, Matt tight behind her, pulling back her hair.

  
He folds himself tightly to her side, gingerly avoiding her ass and holds her like she’s full of some crazy magic, which she is, this amazing woman who shatters underneath him in anticipation of her punishment.

  
“I’ve got you, I’ve got you…” he murmurs, pressing his lips to her neck and focusing on returning to the world.

  
It’s two or three minutes before he registers the vibrator dropping to the floor; Alex’s face in her hands. Was she too tired? No, press on…

  
He turns her to face him now and holds her in his arms and they stand gently rocking. He’s tempted to walk them back to the bed, shower her with kisses and rub her with lotion and fall into sleep, but can’t. Just can’t.

  
“Just one more thing, baby. One more thing… shhhh….” She’s kissing her way up his neck and her lips now seek his… “One more thing to put us right.”

  
“What?”

  
“I need…” Matt is scared in this second, torn between taking care of Alex and just taking. _shit, here I go…_ He starts again with more confidence in his voice:  
  
  
“I’m going to hit you Alex, three times. And it’s not to make you come. If you need to you can but this will HURT. I need it to hurt. You can use your safeword and we just won’t do this again… truly, use it… I just – I can’t do this again Alex… it won’t work if you don’t respect what we have and… if you can just think that you can just take your cunt away and leave me a note as a replacement...” He ends on a challenging, hurt, vulnerable note of need.

  
She feels a shudder of thrill.

  
This wasn’t really quite a conversation with Matt – the conversation with Matt was working its way through and across this, the bedroom theatrics, but there was a powerful pull to truth. Yes. She felt in awe of this man who just knew what they needed.

  
“No, I shouldn’t, she says – I mustn’t. I’m sorry…”

  
“Three strokes,” he says, unfolding the belt as her eyes go wide and adrenaline shakes her. “It will hurt. Do you trust me with hurting you?”

  
She can only nod.

  
“I love you, Alex. And even if we never do this again – if you don’t want to – I’m not saying that we won’t have sex or be together – I promise you all sorts of sex… just not _this_ sex,” he adds, meaningfully.

  
She looks at him and he almost laughs she looks so horrified.

  
“No, Matt.”

  
“No?”

  
“Whatever we need.”

  
Relief pours through him.

  
“Do you need me to tie you, Alex?

  
“No, I’ll stand still.” Then she changes her mind: “yes.”

  
“Yes, you need me to tie you?” he’s whispering and kissing her cheeks now while they negotiate.

  
And she’s kissing him too, soft nips to his neck, sweet kisses to his cheek... _I don’t want to mess this up ... I don’t want to move while you’re punishing me. I don’t want to have to stop before three. I want to show you how much …. How much_

  
Instead all she chokes out in a whisper is: “I need you to, in case I move… I don’t want you not to be able to finish.”

 _  
Fuck._ Matt holds her shoulders and moves back so he can see her face.

  
“I need you to know why. Why do I need to punish you now, Alex?”

 _  
It always came down to the same thing – she loved and trusted and then covered it up… insecurity, her heart... I will always come to you first. Teach me._ “I know.”

  
The way she said it was good enough for him and the weight with which she spoke those two words broke his heart. He didn’t need to hear more. Still, he made his voice commanding and angry even as he melted:

  
“If you feel you’re pulling back you don’t write me a fucking note, yeah? You come over and put my hand on your cunt and tell me you’re having trouble feeling wanted.” _How does he just KNOW?_ Then, slower, lower : “And Alex, I will fuck you, I will hit you, I will drop to my knees and worship you and LOVE YOU… you get everything. Understand?”

  
“I do.”

  
Her voice is so small. Like it’s coming from a space so very, very far away and his heart drops. Matt regroups and redirects, he doesn’t want to take her there – never – those spaces of insecurity are not their spaces and now he’s sorry to have pushed her. Will push her somewhere else, fast:

  
“Are you ever going to take your cunt away from me again and write me a shitty note?” Matt rolls the words in his mouth and makes sure they drip with sex, not judgment, and love, and how she is impossible but he LOVES her. Stern enough to keep things hot, adoring enough to shift her, he hopes. “Show me you’re sorry now, love.”

  
He opens the drawer to find the paisley scarf again and a shorter red one and walks her to the bed and directs her down, feet still on the floor, and ties one hand to the headboard, one to the footboard on the far side as he talks.

  
And god help him if he wasn’t getting hard again already… the idea that she was going to let him do this, too..

  
“It should hurt: I need it to hurt.” It’s barely a whisper.

 _  
Fuck._ He wants his hand on his cock but resists – he needs to focus on the blow.

   
“Count to three if you can, Alex.”

   
“Four.”

   
“What?” Fuck.

  
“Four.” Then, smaller: “Please.”

   
Fuck. “Four Alex?”

   
“Yes, I need four. So that I will remember.”

 _  
Death by Alex Kingston_.

  
"I’m not going to make this feel good, Alex." He steps back, far back, it feels wrong being so far from her body now, and he takes aim, finds his mark softly then THWACK, connects with the full force of all his strength and it feels wrong and right and perfect and risky. _Mine._ She screams and pulls and does not count. He doesn’t give her much time to recover. THWACK.

  
Alex draws last night's experience, the in-and-out of their breath, draws it over this moment like a blanket, like a map, and as he hits her, they blur into one until – like a pop - she can’t think, or make images and the tears come.

  
And her mouth spills out yes and oh god please but she doesn’t hear herself.

  
He hits her a final time, welting her. Then drops the belt to the floor.

  
“There. All done. You’re perfect, Alex. Bloody perfect. Come on Alex… shhh.” He moves quickly to untie her and kiss her wrists and help her onto the bed, curling her on her side before scrambling in beside her to find her face and kiss her lips and forehead and run his fingers along her waist and suck at her nipple. Morning light steals through the window.

  
*              

  
"It can’t always be this acrobatic, Matt. I’ll feel like I’m training for Boudica again,” she laughs.

   
“I know… I know… I just want…”

   
“I know.”

   
“You like it, though, Alex.”

   
“Oh, I do.” She purrs.

   
“And I still have two days off when we fly back to London – Moff couldn’t reschedule them for shooting so I’m hoping it’s a date. I have _plans_.”

   
He registers the exhaustion on her face and rushes to add: “You and your dirty mind. Can you only think of one thing, woman? It’s a _band_.”

   
“Sounds perfect, darling.” She’s gently stroking him, wondering vaguely when the last time was she’d had sex with a man without intercourse and answering never. He draws her close, attentive and cherishing. Always putting her at the centre.

  
“Matt, is it ok, we didn’t...”

  
He looks at her, curious.

  
She swats him - “I thought you read minds?” She raises that deadly-gorgeous eyebrow and he registers her hand on his cock and understands.

  
“More than ok, love. But ready when you are,” he grins.

  
“I may never be,” she says in a theatrical, put-upon voice that also speaks to how completely he’s satisfied her and he actually blushes.

   
“In that case, love, just know …” he kisses that eyebrow and he whispers, then, close to her ear, just a bit unsteady, these lines memorized: “Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.” He says the lines like secret code.

   
“That’s beautiful, Matt,” Alex manages.

   
“You don’t recognize it?”

   
“No.”

   
He can’t help it, but he lets out a small giggle. “Truly, love?”

   
Alex looks at him, confused. “Truly. Should I?”

   
“It’s de Sade… I read de Sade for you. Among other things.”

   
 _Is he blushing?_

 _  
_ “Really?”

   
“Yes, of course. You said on national television you'd like to invite Sade to your dinner party. And you haven’t even read him?”

   
“Not to the point of memorizing it, Love," she teases, “just skimmed for the good parts.” She quickly stops smiling: “I love that about you. Here’s one for you, Matt.” She looks into his eyes and begins to recite:

_Falling in love_   
_is glamorous hell, the crouched, parched heart_   
_like a tiger ready to kill; a flame’s fierce licks under the skin._   
_Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in._

  
“What’s that from?”

   
“My new favourite book of poems: _Rapture_ by Carol Anne Duffy.”

 

He nestles against her. “It’s my favourite book of poems now, too.”

 

“Good choice.”

 

The sun is high in the sky now and they’ll need to move to dress. No longer that aching, full of promise early morning space between here and there. But something just as good. Better. They look to each other and really see. Larger than life. Beautiful. Full on high noon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sad about saying goodbye to my first attempt at fanfiction … it seems a long time ago that I wrote these two for the mattex kinkathon and I’ve loved wondering about them. I think Alterity really needs to end here… I’ve been resisting!… + think that’s why I haven’t been able to post this bit – I didn’t want it to end! ☺ But I was inspired to finish by seeing Matt talk about that poem. I might revisit this version of Matt and Alex again, though, and make a fresh piece part of a series with this work and Learning to Come to his Voice. Would people read associated work with them in a slightly different place or would that take away from this piece? I’d love it if you could let me know. And please know that I have so SO appreciated all of your comments - you just can’t know how amazing and thrilling I’ve found it that people were reading and taking the time to respond to my writing. That was utterly new and surprising to me. And a gift. Thank you. Xo


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